Desert Hurts
by Hector Gilbert
Summary: Misty and Brock are older and - so they think - stronger now. Butch is out of Team Rocket and with nothing to lose, but is he still too cocky for his own good? (Now a multi-part story, completed.)
1. Desert Hurts

Desert Hurts  
By Puffin/Puffinstuf/Hector Gilbert

Chapter One  
"Desert Hurts"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

Misty and Brock were older, and - so they thought - stronger now. However, they wanted to leave and that was that. Anywhere would do: a lava pit, a jail - but the further the better, the sooner the better.

They didn't know how long it was since the first of the nukes exploded, to change their youth forever. It was something that they had to forget though, especially in what was left of the highway: large streams of baking desert, the road grounded to bedrock and buried by great sandstorms.

Tracey and Brock, as the elders of the group, had split a deal: Tracey could keep Electabuzz (the only Pokémon that the group had left), and in return Brock could keep the group's only pistol (now fully loaded with an eight-bullet clip). Brock also had a motorcycle with him, and Misty's handbag for safekeeping.

Misty held onto Brock's back, at the rear end of the bike. He had made sure that the fuel tank was filled with gas beforehand, so that there was almost no chance that they would have to stop at the middle of the desert way. Brock kept the pistol in his underpants and Misty's handbag over his shoulder. (When Misty asked why he put his gun there, he asked her if she wanted her bag there too, so she decidedly forgot about it.)

This used to be a forest, Misty thought, to think that navigating in a desert is just as bad.

"Are you sure that this is the direction to Pewter city?" Misty asked, on the edge of fretting.

"You can trust me here, girl." He seemed oddly focused.

Misty rolled her eyes. "Whatever." Her rump was beginning to hurt; Brock was very husky and took up a lot of the room on the bike, leaving little space for her no matter how thin she was.

They both seemed to relax for a few seconds, in an attempt to ignore the random dead body that made an appearance. Misty arched her head back and breathed in deeply through her nostrils when she felt her nose vessels burst and a nosebleed begin to trickle down. By the time that it was apparent to her, she had sucked it in and now it became a simple salty taste in her throat.

Brock heard the painful gurgle of swallowing mucus-filled blood. "Are you alright there?" Brock asked.

"It's a nosebleed, okay?" Misty replied in a scratched voice.

"Alright, but..."

"Shut up."

Brock sighed and continued driving. He stared in front of him, only to see another couple of bodies in the distance. They didn't seem too badly off. But as he came closer, he realised something.

The supposed bodies were standing up.

"Brock, those are real live people ahead!" Misty exclaimed.

Brock narrowed his eyes. "I know, I know." He began to veer off to the right, away from the bystanders. They were potential robbers, and being mugged was the last thing that Brock needed.

Misty noticed a gleam from one of the shadows ahead. As if there was a diamond wedged in the sand. "I think one of them... Has a gun!"

"What?" Too late.

After a second of bloodied confusion, pain, and panic, suddenly Misty found herself in the wreckage state. Misty raised her heavy head up for the few seconds needed to notice a fire catching up to her before the numb devouring calm of post-pain overtook her.

***

The two figures cautiously observed the collapsed motorbike. They had been Rockets once, before James framed them for something and they were drugged out of Team Rocket, left abandoned in the desert. But that didn't stop them from mugging a biker that happened by chance to come their way.

They had their compasses hidden in their coats beforehand, and with them undetected they had no problem with navigating their way to the city. Cassidy also had a .38 successfully hidden in an inner pocket, but with a 'click' after the blast Cassidy discovered that it was now out of ammo.

"That was our last bullet." Cassidy threw her pistol away, leaving it to lie in the sand.

"At least you didn't waste it on a miss," Butch concluded, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"I never miss," Cassidy hissed back. With an oppressive impression of an appearance, she stormed towards where the bike had crashed.

Butch said nothing back. Cassidy was usually more moody a character than he was anyway. Even if Butch did lose his cool over something, there was the simple procedure of hiding it and not retorting. It was hard though, especially since they were no longer Rockets now but simple stragglers desperately attempting to distinguish themselves or at least stand out from the rotting corpses lying everywhere.

At least in the more empty patches it's a good place to have a picnic, Butch shrugged.

When they had found the spectacle, it was what they had expected. The driver lay motionless a few feet away from the bike but the other passenger, a woman in her late-teens, lay tangled in the mess of a sharp metal wreckage. A fire starting in the bike was catching up to her hair, dancing with glee on Nature's sick thought of devouring upon contact. A side-effect of birth.

"I'll check the driver, you check the passenger," Cassidy ordered, heading to where the male one lay.

"Got it," Butch confirmed. They needed to steal some things as long as they were important, just to increase their chances of survival on the short- and long-run.

Butch decided on arrival that if the corpse wasn't burnt by the flame, he had a better chance of finding something valuable to himself. He tore the girl from the motorcycle, bit by bit and cut by cut. At the end of the entire business, Butch realised that she wasn't dead.

She fell in and out of consciousness moment after moment, groaning every few seconds. It resembled an eerie polyphony after a while, disturbing whoever it didn't annoy.

The blood worryingly stained the sand, left behind as her legs were carried and the rest dragged away from the bike's wreckage. It streamed from her torso, her legs, her face, and ironically enough, her nose.

***

Butch and Cassidy were talking about what they found, pointing out where they lay.

"I found nothing from the girl, but she's pretty hurt," Butch observed.

Cassidy shook her head. "I didn't find anything from the driver either. He looks pretty much out too."

Butch's face tensed up into a nervous grimace. "'Looks'?"

***

...

Misty felt a pressing weight everywhere on her body. Her brain didn't respond with pain for she couldn't sense where her wounds were, but she was certain that there were many. She lay back, hoping that sleep was her escape from this numb torture she went through.

From the corner of her eye she noticed a large, dark-skinned man cautiously crawling towards her. He stared at her, looking for life signs.

"Misty?" he whispered.

"Brock!" she wheezed.

Brock placed two fingers at her lips. "Quiet. I found your bag, but all your stuff broke apart in there by my fall."

Misty would have hit him, but now what could she do? "That's okay."

Brock clenched a fist, but Misty didn't see it. "I'm okay. Everything's okay... They're talking... Stay there." Misty only had half a clue of what he was implying but somehow, in her condition, she didn't feel too convinced of that.

"They? What about your gun?" Misty felt her head slam against the sand, rather roughly for the way Brock usually treated a girl.

Brock patted Misty's head comfortably, letting her cough blood-stained sand back to the ground. "You don't appear to have a concussion, so try to sleep. I'll explain everything to you later."

"Brock..." A glancing look from Brock silenced her.

"Go to sleep..." He turned around and crawled away from her sight, heading for wherever they were.

***

"I think that we should go," Butch started, looking down at the sound.

Cassidy nodded. "Agreed. I hope that there's no-"

A tall dark figure leaped from behind Cassidy, with a large weight crashing down.

The skull could be heard cracking and finally crashing down in response to a large weight pressing harder and harder through it's hard surface. Thick red blood shot out of Cassidy's nose, leaving a moderate (but not major) stain in the sand. The skin on the cranium ripped open as if it were a handy zipper, and with that Cassidy died after a sudden instant of confusion and bits of vital organ spilling on hot sand.

Her body crashed to the ground, the thump against the sand forcing the seperated soft and hard remains to shudder a little. The corpse was in good condition from the neck down; her clothes didn't lose a stitch. Butch stepped back and looked above her carcass to see a tall, dark man wielding a black handbag.

"So they say that the desert hurts, huh," Brock commented, looking as if he was talking about the weather.

Butch didn't understand his twisted idea for a joke until he noticed sand slowly trickling through a hole at the bottom of the bag. Blood lined its edges.

Butch stepped back a little, growling half-heartedly. For a second he seemed to imagine a future without Cassidy in the picture, killing somebody for him. She was the brawn, he the brains. When he wanted to kill somebody Cassidy would do it for him and so forth, happily ever after. When Cassidy wanted Butch to help her with something when it came to problems and brains, Butch would help her.

There was a moment of tense silence then. Cassidy was brutally smashed to death by a bag filled with sand. Misty lay beside Brock, cuts everywhere at once. Brock looked down at Misty for a few seconds, inspecting, and suddenly seemed very tensed-up when he looked back at Butch again. After another second of standing still Butch realised that Brock now held a pistol in his hand.

Brock nodded himself off, but Butch still found himself now staring up the long barrel of his gun. "You probably thought that I was dead, otherwise you would have crushed me where I lay." Brock was right. He had played dead and succeeded. Now Cassidy was the real death, lying in a heap with half of a brain.

"Well, Misty didn't seem to be so lucky-" Butch stopped the conversation when he heard a soft howl.

It began as a breeze, but it was growing strength exponentially. As it did, the sand began to move with the flow's direction. In this case, the "lucky one" was Butch.

Butch felt an itching sensation at the back of his neck which turned into a series of sharp stings, but he knew that the uncomfortable feeling was better than looking back. Brock grabbed his eye with his right hand, which dropped the gun that it once held. He cursed at this, not that it would have done him any good.

Butch's eyes weren't vulnerable; they were facing away from the sandstorm. However, Brock was unaware and blinded. Misty held on to herself, crying for everything: all the dead people that she once knew, all of her stolen and/or killed Pokémon, all of Brock and Ash's and Tracey's stolen and/or stolen Pokémon. She cried for herself, for she was a sitting duck, injured in the middle of a fight.

Butch didn't cry for himself in the embodying sandstorm. Rather, he felt frustrated at the isolating shroud, and he broke through in a fit of rage. Rage against Cassidy's killer, and Jessie and James to help fire them from Team Rocket and get them in this new kind of a mess in the first place. Cassidy was his keystone to keep him from going insane.

Butch was in a sandstorm before, and learned some of the tricks of the trade the hard way. He remembered a time when he was blinded and shielded his eyes, looking down rather than forward.

Butch almost tripped over Brock lying down on the sand, his good arm covering his eyes and his other arm looking for his gun, just out of reach on the was-soft sand. The bag that was used to kill Cassidy lay on the other side of where Brock was, pebbles of ground sand flustering out of the small hole weakness.

"So you're looking for this?" Butch asked, taking the pistol and weighing it in his good hand. Brock probably couldn't hear his low-pitch and low-volume words over the wind.

Butch didn't want to delay the inevitable, so he took the pistol's handle grip in the palm of his hand, and scratched the itch on his finger with the trigger. The barrel of the gun happened to aim at Brock's nose.

His head seemed to be launched back, as if someone had kicked it hard. Butch felt a stinging curiosity to look at Brock's face - as it had just been smashed in with a bullet - but he kept himself. Butch knew he was dead anyway.

Butch knelt beside the body, waiting for the sandstorm to clear.

***

When Butch was certain that it had cleared totally, the scene had changed totally. The desert highway was infamous for being covered with bodies. Now Butch knew why it was, and why people wanted to leave them alone. As did Brock.

As he walked away from the scene with gun in hand, he heard a groan. He turned around.

Misty was recovering, and now she was able to stand. Butch aimed the gun at her. His own clashing thought that he would not like to be put out of his misery even when injured made him shiver a little bit and look away from her.

She was maimed by the bicycle's machinery. Her right arm hung limp, her cuts still bleeding. She was no longer able to cry, and now she simply hugged what remained of her jacket to her thin body as if it were a living person still looking out for her.

No. Butch couldn't shoot her. It was uncalled for, and wasting a bullet would be wasting two lives: Misty's, and his own. She seemed to stare into space and ignore the gun, ignore Butch, ignore the scourge of reality. She had nothing left, and neither had he. It was time to stop simply robbing and start looking out for his own basic needs; it was time to just survive.

He turned around and left her there, staring into the horizon with no place to go. Casually, he left.

***

After what seemed to be a long interlude of doing nothing, Misty looked back to see two bodies: the limp, sagging wound of Brock, and what seemed to be a very dead Cassidy. Bits of gore had been scattered in many directions at once from their softening heads during the sandstorm, and most of the once-intelligent mush that they cherished for years before was no longer inside the cranium now, instead simply buried by layer upon layer of the ground rock.

Does he have a compass? Misty thought immediately before suddenly remembering that he didn't.

Then she looked at Cassidy. The first thing that you would notice was the crack on her head, but the second thing was her decorated jacket with all sorts of... Stuff on it. She felt tempted to take the jacket off, but her superstitions got past her logic this time around.

Thinking about wearing something with a collar covered with blood and whatever else, Misty felt sick. In response she shook her head vigorously but nothing happened. Nothing felt better at all around the bodies and around the experience. It was after a while of stifling vomit and taking pauses between intervals of search that Misty found Cassidy's compass.

She knew that the city was roughly west from where the bike was shot down, so she walked over the spectacle and moved on away from the brutal deaths of people she knew. Remarkably, even as she walked over older, rotting bodies in the distance, leaving her past made her feel better, even feel at home from the sight of death, as if the fright had switched "off".

Brock and Cassidy joined the selection that they didn't initially expect or want to join, gradually entering the gradual decay of half-life with the other abandoned ones.

Misty and Butch continued on, in what Misty hoped were opposite directions.


	2. Arrival

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Two  
"Arrival"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

A broad middle-aged man wearing a tattered red vest could have gotten up from the hard ground which he lay on. Maybe live for another few days, and hopefully get to lie around in a few dunes a mile or so away. But he didn't see anything worthwhile in aiming for nothing in particular.

His throat was drying up, but the thirst for reprisal was killing him. His skin was cracking for Golem and Nidoking... Tyranitar and Onix... Dugtrio and Sandslash.

A Natu. He didn't own one, so why did he find himself suddenly looking at one? Probably just to stare back. He knew Natu's stare very well; he had caught a few in his time, as they were good subjects for experimentation.

His heart skipped a beat. It had come for him. It was telling him something. It was telling him to stand up, which he did as he had nothing to lose.

Giovanni.

It referred to him by his own name, making his mind snap to attention. He remembered why he didn't like the Natu/Xatu series; they acted as if they knew everything - because, of course, they did.

Giovanni. We're leaving. We are going to teleport away from here.

Natu's telepathy was sensed by Giovanni with a severity that Giovanni recognized as just crossing the line to being a threat. Its thoughts had an "aftertaste", causing Giovanni's head to ache but also with the cold reminder that the Natu could do a lot more if it wanted.

Giovanni was too smart to not be suspicious. He got this sensation in his head only during his conversations with Mewtwo in the past, largely due to its dangerously sadistic nature which as far as he was aware was not and has never been present in the Natu/Xatu series. That Natu had to have a trainer with rather individual interests.

Giovanni thought a lot but did nothing about his concerns for the sake of his pride, as he would feel better being killed by a Human or a Pokémon rather than the elements. No common death for Giovanni; he founded Team Rocket, he built up a strong Pokémon team (before his rebelling Rockets killed them all in the process of throwing him out), and so now he was going to go in style.

With that, Giovanni clung on to the Natu with no more hesitation. The feeling in his head went away, and so he teleported.

One month later...

Misty was surprised by how quickly day turned into night on her roughly westward course, as she could have sworn that she had only woken up a few hours beforehand (when she could recall still being with Brock). But this surprise was suppressed when the thought that perhaps time was going by quicker than she had thought crossed her mind.

Either way, she had just entered this "City" that Will had told her about earlier. Here the feel of the ground had noticeably changed from the stale, flat surface of the effective desert outside (and the sand of the dunes further onward) to the grinding together of the small and blunt stones below her feet that had laid out across the grounds inside the City.

If it wasn't for the unusual design of the City, it would have reminded Misty of what life used to be like before wartime. A long, wide and straight path protruded from the courtyard, leading to a single towering skyscraper. An incredibly thick wall that must have been made of steel surrounded the City.

In fact, the City seemed much more like an odd sort of castle except in the respect that the entrance didn't appear to be at all protected. Misty just walked right in through a large gap in the wall to reach the courtyard.

The City appeared to be deserted outside of the large building in the center, where the white glare of florescent lights shone through the windows in the building. Misty hated florescent lights - they gave her headaches, and were all over the place once upon a time - but now they were a prime attraction to any place.

Misty began to walk quietly towards the building, but something was pulling her towards it. It felt like Home; a new world for her. She had to get there before her space was taken by someone else.

The cuts and scratches all over Misty seemed to fade away. With that, she stopped walking, and started running. Moving as fast as she could towards the building and its florescent lights, she kept her pace for as long as her body would allow.

But no matter what Misty did, she didn't get any closer to the building ahead. After many long minutes she finally collapsed, struggling to get her breath back after her stumble to the ground.

Misty lay on the ground, still thinking about florescent lights and the past luxuries that she never learned to appreciate in time. But in a few more minutes, she would try to keep going. All that kept her living in the first place was the promise of the City; she believed that - knowing them - Ash and Tracey were probably with Brock now.

She was quick to try to get up again. She found a man standing beside her; she grabbed his leg to try to get up.

"Manners, Misty." His leg then vanished, as he had teleported away.

Misty recognized the voice. It was Will's. She kept lying down.

Will must have re-appeared beside her, for she continued to hear his voice as she lay down. "Thank you for falling into my little trap. You have been... So kind."

"Not while I'm still conscious," Misty growled.

"Are you?"

***

"...And I was saying to him, 'they had to boycott Israel sometime!', but-"

"Hey, Kurt!" his friend interrupted. "Someone's coming."

They stood outside, apparently meaning to be guarding the small compound beside what were once Tohjo Falls. And, indeed, a figure in black with disheveled hair was heading in their direction. It obviously wasn't very often that they found someone there, at least anyone that was still moving.

They both noticed a sort of stammer in the man's movements, an indication that he was approaching his limits. The two guards watched him carefully, confirming that he was in fact moving towards them and not the entrance to the cave with the drained Falls some paces away to the left.

Kurt whipped his pistol out and tensed the grip on the trigger in readiness. His friend would have felt it prudent to do the same, if he had one in the first place. The man walking towards them - now appearing to them to be wearing the clothing of a male Team Rocket Executive - kept walking undisturbed.

He probably wasn't an Executive anymore. Usually they stayed bunched together in a group; kill one, and you would find ten more. Something must have happened to him. But still, Kurt had the gun. He would surely do the talking here.

"Hey!" he yelled.

The man from Team Rocket didn't respond. He still walked at his gradual pace, coming ever closer towards them both.

"This place is off-limits to unauthorized civilians!"

He finally stopped when he was only a few paces away from the two men. He sighed. "Hey."

Kurt raised an eyebrow at the man's raspy voice, pulling the catch at the back of his gun. "...You may need some identification."

"Bite me."

For a brief, tense moment Kurt looked back at his friend, then towards the stranger again. "We are afraid that you may bite us back."

Kurt didn't notice that the stranger also had a gun on him until his right eye hammered itself into his skull, lodged in with a bullet. After a moment in shock, the pain overtook him and he sank limply to the ground against the wall.

The remaining guard looked down at Kurt's body. He then looked back at the stranger, his eyes wide. He finally recognized him as Butch, of the old Team Rocket.

Butch's eyes shined with his cold smile. "Do you want to stay with your friend?"

The remaining guard could only shake his head.

"Well, then." Butch blew a puff of smoke from the gun he fired. "Show me the grand tour."

***

A young man in his late-teens got up from the bench that he was sitting on for the past twelve hours. Something in the air of the building was doping him down, preventing him from thinking properly as he remained in his cell. For the past few days, he was struggling to regain concentration but he found himself unable.

He got up at the sound of conversation outside, as he hadn't heard that since the morning. Eventually he managed to stagger to the slot on the door, specially placed for him to see them.

Predictably they were his cell guards, wearing the uniforms of Team Rocket Grunts. They were talking to each-other, seemingly taking no notice of the youth looking at them.

He noticed them carry an unconscious young woman in their arms, her legs grinding against the concrete floor. They paused for a second as one of them had to scratch himself. Then they both got moving again, until their voices faded away.

He collapsed beside the door, feeling his muscles grow numb. He was going to return to his usual daze again. But this time, he thought about the woman they were carrying.

...Misty Waterflower...

***

Butch broke their best champagne bottle with a flick of his wrist, letting it shatter into several pieces on the wooden floor. He brushed away a couple of glass shards with his foot before beginning to advance on the guard that brought him in.

"I want something to drink with," Butch hissed through his teeth. "Not something to get stoned with."

"Th-the water's at the back, in the cylinders," the guard explained.

Butch nodded at him in approval. "That's better."

Walking past a few more glass shards, Butch walked to the back of the compound's largest sector. Planks of wood creaked under Butch's feet, even at the slow pace he had to keep himself looking for water and aiming his pistol at the guard's face at the same time.

He inspected the steel cylinders with his arms, in each of their different sizes. They appeared to be filled with liquid, so the guard was probably right. After double-checking the guard, Butch stuffed his gun back into his pants when he found one that he could carry along in his arms quite comfortably.

Butch from there knew his way out of the compound, as the guard had rather conveniently left the entrance gate open rather than close it behind him. He walked out of the small building he was in, leaving the guard dumbfounded and dishonored.

Butch was just outside with his water when things started to go wrong.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Butch recognized Rob's voice. Butch didn't have to look to his side, as Rob was staring right at him.

Looking at the gate, Butch only found several armed personnel. To his left and to his right, they surrounded Butch decisively. Rob had his own gun anyway, and Butch knew that he was a good shot.

Butch ground his teeth. "Is that a rhetorical question?"

"Yes, it would be," Rob chuckled. "Now put the water on the ground."

Butch obliged, placing the cylinder on the ground as calmly as he could to keep it from tipping over on its side. He could only look down at the ground now. If anything, the ground was what Rob wanted Butch to look at.

"Now," Rob continued, "unless you wish to castrate yourself in the near future, get that gun out of your pants."

Butch removed the pistol Brock had practically given him, and placed it on the ground beside the water.

"I suppose that you're the one in charge here," Butch sighed.

"And I "suppose" that you are correct," Rob replied, nodding at his bodyguard to lower their weapons.

Butch wasn't too surprised, but he knew that thousands would be. Rob was also violently ejected from Team Rocket, but at an early stage in their post-war reform. But he had friends, and Butch knew that Rob had wanted him to be one of those people.

There was a short pause in speech before Rob predictably tutted. "Not at your usual standard now, are you Butch? This is quite a desperate measure for you." Butch kept looking at the ground, but knew that he was smiling. "Surely you must have known about my arrangement. One person holds a gun, the other-"

"-Has control over the alarm," Butch realized, looking at the guard behind him.

The guard grinned widely. "Maybe you should go with them."

Rob's eyes lit up. "My, what a brilliant idea!" He looked back at Butch. "Butch, I am now placing you under arrest. How about it?"

Butch breathed out deeply, resigning.


	3. Custody

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Three  
"Custody"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon. But Rob Rod is my own character, let that at least be known...

Will knelt on the top of the stairway, listening to the judgements of the Team Rocket leader.

"I'm sorry," Fortress explained (or at least tried to), "I know just as well as you do that if Triatu was to control the security in the area, it would certainly prevent people from stealing or otherwise sabotaging our supplies. But surely we can't place our trust so openly on a single Pokémon!"

Will looked back at him, a hint of annoyance marking his tone. "We need to have control here. Triatu isn't very well-known, to say the least. I only recently evolved my third Xatu to this form; a month ago, it was still only a Natu. A way to repel attackers, surely, would be through a fear of the unknown."

Fortress' eyes narrowed. "Allow me to be blunt, Will."

"Yes, sir?" Will's eyes brightened looking at his commander.

"I believe that you are repeating what you were saying, just with different wording."

It made Will sigh. Fortress wore a beret, making him look like a grunt. His huge Crobat always stood by his side, acting as his sole Pokémon and bodyguard. It was said to have the highest level of any Pokémon belonging to Team Rocket. He helped oust Rob and Giovanni. A rebel leader he was; a dictator he was not.

If Will could say all that to him in reply, he would feel better with himself. But Fortress didn't like telepathy. He only accepted the crudeness of speech.

With that in mind, Will knew that he would have no regrets in killing him.

***

Two men stood exposed to the air in a fenced-over compound, holding their weapons. One of them portrayed the sense of having authority and loving it with a twisted sense of passion.

"We have the man you want in your office, sir," the grunt reported. "He's waiting."

"Excellent," Rob replied with a nod. "Tell Gary that I shall only be another fifteen minutes or so."

"Yes, sir." He turned around and walked away in an even pace that Rob found highly amusing. Rob kept watching him until he vanished into the building that housed the sector of his quarters, before grinning to himself with accomplishment.

So he came when you needed him.

Stupidly, Rob first thought that it was his own thoughts. He heard from Will of Rocket City all the time, but he still couldn't get used to the "whole psychic business". It took him a few seconds.

Sure, Rob thought, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I want him to help me too, you know.

That's what I was planning, Rob noted.

But it was to no avail, as Rob could sense by then that Will was gone.

There was tension. There was always tension. Will also had his own agenda, but Rob felt that he could handle him. After all, what were the power of thoughts compared to that of the bodies which held them?

Still, he was a useful resource. A member of the Elite Four in fact, while the Pokémon League that supported it still existed. Rob needed Will. But Will also needed Rob... For the time being.

Either way, in order to satisfy Will Rob certainly knew from the start that he would need Butch.

***

Butch sat down on a wooden chair, his hands cuffed to the seat and his feet tied together. The fibers of the rope that prevented his feet from moving were apparently made out of a hard plastic material; with the skin on his legs unable to breathe, Butch felt an itching sensation that was slowly starting to grow on him.

Butch was certain that the suits that bound him up didn't mean to tie him up so securely, but gave that little extra under the orders of a "Rob Rod". Butch remembered that Cassidy used to always think that he was paranoid with thoughts of his being coerced. But recently, he also remembered where Cassidy was now.

In contrast to Butch's now-inconvenient Team Rocket uniform, Rob was wearing only an undershirt and trousers over his lean body for the warm desert afternoon. With Rob's limited attire Butch could see a long, white mark stretching from his armpit. The long cut was initially from a Scyther, meaning to aim at his heart but just missing the target area. Butch knew that, because at the time the Scyther was his.

Wandering memories haunted Butch like a Misdreavus played with small children, poking and teasing him with no sign of an end. But apparently not with Rob. Rob - by default - forgot everything except for what he didn't need to forget.

"...Butch?"

Hearing Rob's voice, Butch slowly began to divert his thoughts. "Hmm?"

"Cassidy is gone," Rob observed, "isn't she?"

Butch kept his head down when he heard that, because Rob was smiling again. He didn't need to see; Rob couldn't help himself. Rob hated Cassidy - in contrast to Butch - as she didn't need a gun to be powerful.

"You know," Rob continued, "there is no way out of this."

Butch remained silent. Rob didn't.

"Want me to explain?"

Butch's eyes narrowed. "Sure."

"Well," Rob chuckled, "to put it simply, there are two places around here which have water: this compound, and the Team Rocket Base. The rest? Deserted towns... Dead bodies... I am quite sure that you have seen enough of those around."

"Yeah?"

Rob's smile faded. "What I'm essentially saying is that this place is the last chance you have. I know that. You know that."

Butch's fists tensed up further, even though they were already clenched. He did know that, quite well.

"How would you like to get back at Team Rocket?" Rob asked. "You know about their prisoners."

No response, but it wasn't that Rob cared.

"I will let you work here," Rob explained, "if you take care of my rivals in business. Those prisoners they have are potentially quite powerful. Recent reports suggest that Ash Ketchum, Tracey Sketchit, and now Misty Waterflower are being held captive."

Butch's eyes gleamed. "Are you telling me the truth?" Butch asked, forcing himself to look directly at Rob's face.

Rob nodded. "You know that freeing them will throw them into a panic."

"Then," Butch sighed, "get me out of this chair."

"I knew that you would see things my way." Rob approached Butch from behind, taking out his keys to the handcuffs.

"Shut it," Butch thought and nearly said.

Butch's hands felt funny as they were finally freed from the grip of the metal handcuffs, as did his feet when they were finally able to breathe again seconds later. For a few seconds, Butch didn't actually move at all.

But once Butch got going, he surprised himself with his haste to get away - such that he nearly tripped up when Rob interrupted him.

"Hey!" Butch stopped.

"Gary will provide you with your supplies," Rob explained, "he's at the sector just opposite."

"I won't need supplies," Butch growled, not looking back.

"You will."

Butch slammed the door behind him. Once he did, Rob heard Will's voice again.

He won't get very far, will he?

***

Butch knew of Gary Oak. He was a prime target of Team Rocket for many years; while he was a young trainer he was in many ways more feared than Ash. But he didn't stay devoted to his training in his teens, instead devoting himself to research after his famous grandfather had died of a heart condition. Butch also knew even before meeting Gary that Rob would have loved him, so it was no surprise to him that Gary himself was working in his compound.

In the end Butch supposed that Gary's path was the right way to go. His former rival Ash Ketchum had most of his Pokémon killed - but his starter, the famous Pikachu, suffered an even more dishonorable fate: it was stolen by Team Rocket, left to rot in a pokéball within the depths of the storage facilities at headquarters.

And here Gary was, talking to Butch in a room filled to the brim with labeled pokéballs ordered in many shelves.

"I'm sure that you know quite a lot about this one," Gary said while bringing out one of the pokéballs and showing it to Butch.

It was a pokéball with a blue line across the top. Looking closely, Butch could make out "Mantine".

"Yes," Butch agreed. "I had a Mantine in my old squad once."

"So I have been told," Gary replied.

No doubt by Rob, Butch mused. I wonder what else he has "told" him. I remember my old Mantine...

"How did you get this?" Butch questioned him. "Mantines these days are almost extinct."

Gary smiled. "Ah, but you see, I have almost all of them. Some of these beauties are even reported to be extinct. Mantine is one of the more common ones here right now."

Butch wasn't interested in that now though; he just kept looking at the ball. "Whose is this?"

Gary laughed, but at Butch rather than with him. "It's going to be yours, of course."

Butch's heart skipped a beat. "Minimal use?"

Gary nodded. "Yes and no. It has been used before, in other operations. But you can take this one for good."

Butch, having since forgotten his sense of manners, snatched the pokéball from Gary's hands. The Mantine was his now.

Butch wouldn't have practiced minimal use with it anyway, no matter what the consequences would be. The concept of minimal use was discovered rather characteristically by Gary Oak himself. With the discovery came Gary's "Rule of Minimal Use": a caught Pokémon imprints on its master after a given period of time, and is loyal to that trainer for the rest of its life unless traded. If the Pokémon is not in contact with one particular trainer for the (varying) required period of time, however, it can be used again and again with different trainers as a tool of war. It was commonly used by Team Rocket - and probably Rob's men.

Butch slipped the pokéball in his trouser pocket. "What else?"

Gary held his breath. "What else?" He seemed to turn red, as if he was quite angry. "...A couple of things."

Gary slammed Butch's gun on the table with a fresh clip beside it. A compass lay on the table as well. "We trust that you will obtain food and water from Rocket City yourself," Gary stated with a much blander tone than before.

"Thank you," Butch acknowledged subtly.

Gary stared blankly at him. "Go."

***

"Everything's in order. You are dismissed, Gary." With that, Rob watched Gary moving towards the door to the outside.

Rob's eyes sharpened upon noticing a strange augmentation to the pokéball that Gary held in his right hand. Next thing he noticed was that Gary wasn't leaving; rather, he was simply moving towards the closed door, and blocking Rob's way with his body.

Rob recognized the thin gray line on the top of the pokéball. "Is that not the one with Butch's new Mantine in it?"

Gary nodded, but his facial expression had frozen up. "Yeah, I found that it had gone wrong so I gave him another one."

Rob cocked an eyebrow. "Well, I say! 'Gone wrong'?"

"Yeah..." Gary looked Rob straight in the face. "Gone wrong."

"In what way, may I ask?"

Gary let out a sigh, making Rob wait for his response. "...I have found that the Mantine you have given me is not meant for minimal use. It answers primarily to Will, a trainer of mainly psychic Pokémon and formerly of the Elite Four."

Rob opened his mouth to speak at first, but found himself speechless; he hated it when he had to do that, as it certainly didn't happen too often. Gary knew full well that the Mantine was to flush out Butch when they were done, on Will's command. Rob had discussed that with him. That was the plan.

"Well, I must say - you are a very admirable and foolish man," Rob stated as he whipped out his Beretta.

Gary was grinding his teeth, trying not to look at Rob's face. He seemed to be hiding something in his pocket, in fact it took Rob no second thoughts to believe beyond doubt that he was.

"You brought that Butterfree with you," Rob realized out loud.

Gary finally grinned. "Correct." He began to carefully reach into his pocket.

"Don't release it," Rob growled, his usually bright eyes gleaming ever colder.

Gary tutted. "You know that I'm not one to take orders like that, Rob." And indeed, within another couple of seconds he had his own pokéball in hand and at the ready.

Rob gave him a warning shot with his pistol, but for Gary it seemed to not be so much a "warning" as it was an excuse to retaliate. He leapt away from where the bullet hit, chucking his pokéball to the ground at the same time.

A white flash lit up the scene, as Butterfree came out of its pokéball. Rob swore through his teeth as this blinding flash caused him to miss Gary on his next few shots.

Two against one. Rob reckoned that it was just as Gary had hoped, for it was just as Rob had feared.

Butterfree didn't get any orders from Gary, because it didn't need them. It used supersonic without hesitation, as it was understandably Gary's favorite attack and not Rob's.

He knew what was coming, and began to aim at Butterfree but at this stage even Rob himself knew that it was too late. The noise that screamed in Rob's head began at such a high frequency that his mind couldn't recognize it, but gradually it began to take its toll as the frequency steadily decreased.

The weak wooden floor creaked angrily at Gary as he charged straight at Rob, but Rob couldn't hear a thing. The noise distracted him, making him fire that split-second too slow at a swerving Butterfree.

Gary tackled Rob, pinning him against the wall with a loud resounding "bang" that Rob himself didn't notice. He did notice the floor, however, when his face met with it.

Rob felt Gary nuzzle him against the corner, and from the corner of his eye he noticed Butterfree finally halting in one position. Perhaps it thought that its job was done.

Sensing his opportunity through the noise in his head, Rob swung his pistol forward to face the other end of the room and half-blindly fired a few more shots. The first few missed, but a final bullet took Butterfree down to the floor like a Yanma being swatted.

Gary balanced himself on top of Rob by putting his hands on the wall; one foot slammed against the hand that held Rob's gun - forcing him to finally let go of it - while the other kicked Rob's face. No foot in the face alone satisfied Gary; he kept at it, honoring himself every time Rob flinched.

Rob took his free hand, and pushed Gary slightly with it.

As a result he suddenly soared backwards, further than even Rob had expected. He impacted against the toughened ebony surface with an almighty crash, before flopping motionless on the floor.

Finally, the noise from the fallen Butterfree stopped. The pokémon went down with its master.

Rob got up from his position and ran over to check the pulse; indeed, Gary was dead. His eyes were still open, staring into nothing; Rob's first impulse was to close Gary's eyelids shut, but he looked sufficiently amusing to him the way he was.

Gary's neck was broken. He had shot back from one end of the sector to the other, hitting the wall hard. He was also on top of Rob in more ways than one when it happened. It took Rob a few seconds to figure that one out.

Will, Rob realized. Nice going.

With that, Rob heard a faint chuckle echo through his head.

No problem.

***

Misty felt an invisible weight press against her ever since she gradually woke up. The room smelled very dry, and the bed she lay on felt like the concrete floor. If anything, it appeared to be a prison cell of some kind.

All she could see was the dim gray of the ceiling, but only barely; it was all a sort of blur. She spent hours trying to focus on it - to make the image in her head clearer - but all that amounted to were wasted hours. 

Misty knew that it wasn't just the trouble of waking up. It wasn't normal.


	4. Embracing the Fallen

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Four  
"Embracing the Fallen"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

The pain from Gary's attacks got to Rob's head once he felt better, annoying him persistently. While heading for the door, he cleared his throat and spat out some blood in Gary's general direction in the hopes that it would make him feel better.

But Rob, Will continued, there's no need to thank me. You have enough problems of your own now.

It wasn't usually Will's style to say things like that. Something was wrong. But then Rob remembered what may have been bugging Will. That Mantine Gary gave Butch...

"Oh, shit!" Rob yelled, bolting out the door.

***

One of Rob's grunts stepped outside the sector containing her quarters, closing the door behind her. Usually Rob wasn't outside his own quarters in the compound, but now was an exception as he scurried around almost in a panic towards her.

"Do you need any help, sir?" she asked.

Rob seemed to stiffen up before her upon hearing the word "help". "Yes," he rasped. "We need to go after our guest."

"So I suppose that Butch left a little too early?" she inquired, in somewhat too informal a fashion for his expectations.

"I suppose you could say that," Rob muttered. "He's heading for Rocket City with a Mantine. We'll need to follow them both, but not necessarily kill them."

"I'll go get reinforcements," she said hurriedly while leaving to tell the others.

Rob breathed deeply in and out, trying to think pleasant thoughts. He now felt that he should never have trusted Gary Oak. Gary was too independent for him. He felt as if he had to rethink his chain of command. But on that, another regret reached him.

Damn, Rob thought, I should have got her to clean out Gary's mess.

***

...It was just like the Team Rocket days of old.

The last time that Butch had a Mantine, it was during the days when he was a serious option for leading Team Rocket after Giovanni. In the end though, Butch was very much "on the side" as Fortress was the one who had pretty much led the whole operation.

There were also suspicions that the "loudmouth" Cassidy - who defiantly stood by Butch's side the whole time - would really be the one in charge if Butch was brought in as leader. Butch didn't like to admit it, but it was probably true.

Looking like a leader threw a lot of criticism in Butch's direction. Stuff that was true, stuff that wasn't. Fortress seemed oblivious to what he got; Butch wasn't, and it was clear to others that he was taking what was said personally. All he had on his side in the end was his new Pokémon. Mantine made Butch feel like the leader he wanted to be when he didn't know the consequences.

Then Butch got yet another accusation thrown at him - that he killed someone in Team Rocket, under the influence of Cassidy. It was wrong; Butch even overheard the culprit before he made his getaway. Nobody was convinced, and out went his Mantine and his future in Team Rocket.

Butch feared that he would be too hard on his Mantine though; perhaps his expectations were too high. But when Butch released it into the soft sand in the dunes well away from Rob's Tohjo Falls base, he immediately noticed how strong it looked.

From the start Butch felt odd about the emphasis Gary put on the fact that it was now his and not to be considered with minimal use. Perhaps there was something about this Mantine that was different. Something that would make Gary want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

Butch shrugged it off quickly. Nobody got past Rob's orders and lived, at least not to the most of Butch's knowledge.

The Mantine cut itself into the sand using its left fin as it began to "slip" across the surface, picking up speed. Butch had heard of this technique, but it wasn't entirely natural; clearly Gary had taught Mantine a thing or two.

The Mantine seemed to tense up as Butch ran up to it and hurriedly hopped on. Most Mantines didn't like riders, but this one kept going to Butch's satisfaction, as its movement through the sand and eventually virtually levitating over the surface grew quicker with each passing second.

It was just like the Team Rocket days of old...

***

In the dark inner areas of Team Rocket's Pokémon reprogramming center, a largely unguarded pokéball began to glow a bright blue color. A kinetic force began to reverberate from it, causing the others on the shelf to gradually roll away.

The pokéball then began to rock back and forth, as if it was trying to support a just-caught Pokémon again. Inside, though, was a Pokémon that wasn't meant for a pokéball. It wasn't in one for a very long time, so it took a long time to capture.

Fortress described Pikachu as "feral" once he finally managed to snatch it from Ash Ketchum - answering to a trainer yet with the behavioral characteristics of a wild Pokémon. Feral Pokémon were impossible to reprogram.

So for over a year, Pikachu stayed in the numbing darkness thinking about how it was regarded as different. Like a patient at a mental asylum that couldn't be cured.

Today wasn't the same old routine, though. Pikachu had waited so long for this day to come. Whether it was a psychic Pokémon's message or blind intuition, Pikachu thought - but not so much as it knew - that its trainer was nearby, in a pokéball-like prison of his own no doubt.

Pikachu's discharge steadily increased in power as it kept testing the strength of the ball. If only to get to Ash. Or perhaps also to spite Fortress as Pikachu was told that there was no escape.

To Pikachu, it was fate. To Pikachu, fate finally broke that pokéball apart, deforming the surrounding area with shrapnel.

***

Rob walked at the proud front of his pack towards the City, twelve lesser men and women following him. Whenever he did this, he tested his co-ordination by tossing the pokéball containing his one Pokémon between his two hands as he walked. He kept on for hours on end, not dropping it once.

It was made a fair bit harder this time, as he found himself talking to Will at the same time. His merry men and women eyed him curiously, watching him continue to maintain control of the pokéball.

Well, this is certainly fun. What's your next plan?

My plan is an obvious one, Rob answered, in the meantime just hang in there.

Stop acting as if I can't handle him. The whole point is that Butch is going to be out of control. The Mantine is only a bonus.

You see, Rob shot back, these are the words of someone who doesn't know Butch.

You know what, Rob?

He stopped. Everyone behind him stopped, looking at the ground where he had dropped his pokéball.

What?

I know more than you think I do.

***

A young man lay beside the door out of his cell unable to move, just like he was after recognizing Misty on her way to her own fate. By these standards, it was a most eventful day.

And as the door to the cell suddenly blew off with several electric bolts and a single loud "bang", things were about to get a lot more complicated for Ash Ketchum.

"Pikachu!"

***

Butch kept on his water/flying-type "kite" Pokémon as he advanced towards the building that he knew of all too well. By this time the ground was not sand or rock but a ground form of gravel, but Mantine had picked up so much speed that it managed to glide a surprising distance before with a tilt of its nose it began to make a landing.

It started at the edge of the courtyard, and ended almost at the wall of the building such was the gradual nature of the descent. Butch didn't mind that though, for he knew that the alternative involved him being chucked off by the inertia and meeting that same wall as a result.

So many memories. So little time to revisit. Butch withdrew Mantine back into the confines of his pokéball, and with a sense of raw determination began to approach his objective.

Butch thought about what Fortress would say to his actions. Probably something along the lines that he was technically killing himself.

Butch grinned. Maybe I am, he thought. Maybe I am.

From the corner of his eye, Butch noticed a Pokémon disappear into the entrance of the building. It was a Wobbuffet, retreating as fast as it could from the Butch it knew.

Butch's grin faded. He knew whose Wobbuffet that was.

***

Rocket Grunt Ted sat at his desk, sipping coffee. If he knew what was going to happen next, the chances were that he would have forgotten completely about the drink that he savored now.

Rocket Grunt Syl burst out the door in front of him, retching out blood. She smelt like she had been jabbed with a cattle prod several times. Another such jab was about to come, with a long blue bolt knocking her away to Ted's surprise from behind.

That one caused her to leap forward like Ted never thought she could, before finally breaking into a tumble. The inertia carried her gracefully along to the firm wall on the opposite end, leading to a loud impact of bone against concrete.

The final impact incidentally broke Syl's neck, killing her instantly. As she lay smoking and lifeless, a young trainer and his Pikachu followed her in.

The young man before him glowed with electrical power seething through his veins. The power the Pikachu obviously gave was stimulating him, preventing him from remaining docile like he was supposed to as a prisoner of Team Rocket.

Ted lay back in his chair, grinding his teeth together. Somehow he felt as if he didn't have much longer.

Ash Ketchum laughed coyly at the petrified guard facing him. "Shocking!"


	5. Uprising

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter five  
"Uprising"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

A Wobbuffet slipped over to its master. Rocket Executive Jessie looked down at it from her chair, trying not to be too distracted from the process of polishing her automatic rifle.

"What's your problem?" Jessie asked, sighing.

"Wobb!"

"...I shouldn't have asked." Jessie placed her gun back down on the desk in front of her. "Is it another dream?"

Wobbuffet said nothing; it usually broke into chatter whenever Jessie so much as mentioned dreams. This interested her.

Jessie crossed her arms as she lay back into her chair. "A person?"

Wobbuffet bobbed its body up and down in agreement.

"James?" she inquired, but she knew that Wobbuffet didn't mind him. "An intruder?"

Wobbuffet seemed to react to those last words. Jessie's eyes widened as she realized that "intruder" was probably right. She immediately saw herself telling James that something was up.

But she couldn't just rely on such loose data. She needed a name.

"Is it Terry?" Jessie asked, but to no response. "Cassidy? Edith? Clare? Rob? Giovanni? Butch?"

At the mention of the last name, Wobbuffet seemed to nearly slip into hysterics. Jessie stood up from her seat, nearly throwing it back to the other end of the room.

And with that Jessie leapt away from her quarters, and ran over to those of James. She was going to thank Wobbuffet, but she forgot to in her rush.

***

Rocket Grunt Thomas got a new bad back as he hit the wall with a bit too much force for his liking. "Hey, easy now!"

"Where's Misty Waterflower's cell?" a rather intrusive Executive hissed, ignoring his complaints.

Thomas didn't like most of the Executives; they seemed to have a sort of superiority complex. But this one looked different, not to mention somewhat familiar. But this guy was also even rougher with Thomas than was usually expected.

For one thing, he had a pistol placed under his chin. For that more than anything else, Thomas decided to talk.

"Basement level one, cell 68," Thomas yelped.

"Good." The "Executive" then let go of him, and ran off hastily.

While sliding down the wall petrified, suddenly Thomas recognized Butch. He wasn't an Executive at all; not anymore. He was just wearing the same clothes.

That fooled me, Thomas admitted to himself, but it probably wouldn't fool anyone else.

***

"I suggest that you cool down," Executive Jessie retorted. "Butch has been taken down before, there's nothing written on the wall saying we can't do it again."

"But what if this is something bigger?" Executive James paced around in his own room/quarters in a panic that Jessie didn't like. "We'll need to tell Boss Fortress."

"Absolutely not!" Jessie shot back, "you know what would happen, given how predictable Fortress is; he'd set off the alarm."

James by this stage had stopped pacing, and was trying his very best to sit still in his own chair. "Why not? He's an intruder!"

"This kind of reaction started The War," Jessie hissed. "This is something small. The last thing we need is something big."

James shook his heavy head. "I just don't know, Jessie."

"Well, clearly," Jessie replied with a cutting smile. "This is nothing to get in a twist over, James. We'll just split off, and get him ourselves."

James went silent for a few seconds. "...I'll only do it if you do one thing for me."

"What's that?" Jessie asked, leaning on the table that James bowed his head down on.

James opened up his left hand and revealed what he was holding on the table: two small audio receivers, apparently meant to fit inside an ear. Jessie recognized them immediately; they were given to still-paired Executives like Jessie and James.

James put one in his ear, and found himself listening to a series of blips that represented Jessie's pulse. The other had James' pulse; Jessie caught on to James' plan, and put that one in her own left ear.

"If you die," James explained, "it's a big thing."

***

I can sense people beginning to panic already with the appearance of Butch.

Rob raised an eyebrow. His feet were now at this stage treading many ground stones in the spacious courtyard, the building's entrance five minutes walking distance away.

I guess that this stage is easy to reach, Rob agreed.

But, of course! You already have your dozen followers, and your backup dozen at your precious base. All I need is to convince Fortress to support me; I need chaos.

Rob's eyes gleamed as an idea came over him.

I can give you some more of that if you want, Rob noted.

"Okay," Rob yelled back at his troops, "I've received some new orders from Will!"

What orders?

"I want you all to surround the entrance. If someone comes out..." Rob made a motion with his hand to make it look like a gun. "...Attack with extreme prejudice!"

Oh.

***

She felt hundreds of tiny electric bolts cover her body, making her feel roughly like a makeshift pincushion. "A-Ash? What-"

Ash held Misty still with perhaps more force than she liked. "Relax. It's a very mild thunder wave, meant merely to block the psychic interference that's doping you down."

Both Ash and his Pikachu now shown a new edge that Misty had never seen before. It wasn't their age, but their desire to taste revenge that marked the slight grin on the end of Ash's mouth. Misty recognized that look on other people many a time; she had already grown not to like it.

Misty kept quiet, staring wide-eyed at the Ash she didn't know. "It'll wear off in a few minutes," Ash explained, "but the psychic Pokémon will have given up by then."

Misty finally walked out of her cell, into the outside hallway. The mutilated bodies of the Rocket Grunts who were at one stage guarding her cell surrounded both of them.

***

Jessie and James had split off in looking for Butch. James was to inspect around in the ground floor level, and Jessie was to go outside and search around the outer perimeter of the building. Of course, that was the way Jessie had wanted it.

Things of course didn't go quite as expected, though - especially in Jessie's case. She was meant to leave using the entrance. When she did, she noticed over ten armed men outside with guns pointed right at her.

She noticed that they were not wearing Rocket uniforms. That was the last thing she noticed before twenty to sixty bullets tore through her body, plastering what was left of her against the wall with their mere kinetic force.

***

A distinct and sharp noise rang in James' ear rather than the "blips" that usually kept him with warm company. This meant that Jessie was dead, but James couldn't swallow it fully.

How? Why? James didn't find himself asking those questions. But what he did do was stop in his tracks.

Stop, turn, and move towards Fortress' office. Jessie died; James wanted the alarms at full blast, for surely it was a big thing.

***

Butch swung the door to Misty's cell open. He wanted to get to her first, as she was the one he had met most recently. A lot would have changed in a few years appearance-wise, so Butch reckoned that it was the wise thing to do.

But to no avail; the cell was empty.

Butch looked down to see a couple of dead Rockets. Their own guns had been taken from their bodies.

Of course, now Butch reckoned that someone was surely screwing him over.

***

James now wore a headset rather than just the little receiver he had in his ear not too long ago. Fortress had given it to him; he had grudgingly accepted it.

James had just managed to save that headset from being chopped vertically in two - probably along with his own head - by dodging just in time with a right-angled bend in the hallway. James had the pleasure of hearing loud banging noises ring in his head, as several stars from a "swift" maneuver hit concrete rather than their target. James had made his move prematurely; if he hadn't, the extremely accurate swift projectiles would have hit.

"What's happening?" Fortress' voice screamed through the reciever.

"...It's probably Butch," James gasped.

"What is?"

"There's a Mantine that has sucked itself on the side wall to act as an immovable turret," James explained, "and it appears to know swift, as if it has been taught it by a TM."

A pause. "Yes," Fortress agreed, "that sounds like Butch."

James looked at the ground in desperation and noticed a bit of debris coming from the wall, knocked out from it by the kinetic force of the swift impacts. "I think... I have a plan, Boss!"

A chuckle. "Well, then. Do it."

Without further prompting, James picked up a concrete stone from the floor and chucked it in the path of Mantine's fire. Predictably Mantine's swift gobbled it up; as it happened, James slid under.

James didn't realize that he was stepping on the dead body of one who wasn't so lucky when he leapt away. But he wouldn't have cared; this was for Jessie, for Team Rocket.

When James got back up, he could see the back of a Mantine that apparently didn't notice his sneaking past. From there James kept walking on, surely towards Butch.

"I'm through."

***

By the time Ash had Tracey freed, he only had to kill five more Rocket Grunts before he felt that it was safe to talk. They all settled down (or at least tried to get close to that) at a balcony one floor above ground level.

Ash finished off the last one by himself, which was relatively unusual as most of the time he let his Pikachu do things for him. It took one well-aimed shot to do it; the guard was sitting at the balcony itself, and the kinetic force of the impact (on the center of his chest) knocked him off. A lumpy red mark lay in his wake on the stubby walls lining the balcony.

He went off suddenly, probably dying instantly.

Misty and Tracey just kept on watching, speechless. Ash seemed on the edge of a breakdown when they met him last, but then again he always was without his Pikachu.

His Pikachu was his pride. And for now, Ash was dangerously full of it.

"...And that's the end of them," Ash finished before sighing, "we shall have to leave soon." It almost sounded like as if it was meant to be a bad thing.

"I took these guns from your guards," Ash reported, handing over a pistol to both Misty and Tracey.

Tracey and Misty looked at each-other, saying nothing. But of the two, Misty didn't feel as if she wanted to break the silence anytime soon.

"Wait here," Ash ordered ('ordered' to Misty's objecting glance in response), "I'll be going back down; I haven't forgotten about anyone's Electabuzz..."

"Ash," Tracey budged in, "Electabuzz is my Pokémon."

Ash groaned back. "So I suppose you want it abandoned in Team Rocket Headquarters." He looked down at his Pikachu. "Most disagreeable, wouldn't you say?"

Tracey opened his mouth up to retort, but didn't get a chance to say anything as at that moment the alarm finally went off.

The alarm sounded; klaxons roared wildly through each and every floor in Team Rocket Headquarters.

When Ash heard their siren song, he hastily abandoned his friends for the slim chance to get back Electabuzz.

Misty continued to stand up, with her new pistol still lying somewhat rejected in the palm of her hand. Tracey pocketed his own pistol, and sat down at the edge of the balcony.

Tracey looked back up at Misty with some concern. Tracey wasn't going to ask about Brock; he had made a hasty yet somewhat wise presumption on that.

"Do you think Ash will make it?" Tracey finally asked.

Misty simply shrugged in response, not speaking because she was beyond words.

***

The alarm sounded; klaxons roared wildly through the thin hallway where Butch stood dumbfounded.

Butch tightened up, and stuffed that clip he found into his pistol. As he had thought, the magazine was meant for the gun.

Butch swung the door to "Misty's" prison cell shut, cursing his judgement. He regretted trusting Rob in his briefing; why should he? He had no reason in particular to believe that Ash, Tracey, and Misty were in there.

Butch looked to his right, and noticed a lean and quirky man with his gun pointing at Butch's face.

"Oh," Butch swallowed. "It's you."

James was always good at sneaking up on people. Butch never understood how he did it. But then again, he was James; you didn't need to know the how and why with him.

James smiled, but with a hint of fear that Butch could see. "Yes; I'm the Executive now."

"Where are your Pokémon?" Butch asked as he looked up the barrel of the gun; James was famous for keeping his Pokémon alive.

"I... Don't need to answer your questions," James finished. "You're under arrest."

Again.

As Butch lowered his gun, James continued to tense up his finger around the trigger. James muttered something into the headset he wore, before looking back up at Butch.

"...You think I killed her, don't you?" James squeaked. "Was it the voice, Butch?"

Butch's eyes glazed when facing the gun. "Yes."

"Butch," James sighed, "you really do have ammo for brains."

***

To his own surprise, Fortress found himself looking at the back of Ash Ketchum. He didn't know how Ash got out; Will's Triatu was meant to be keeping him down. But he was there; that was what mattered.

Ash stood inspecting a few pokéballs on the shelf in front of him, apparently quite occupied. Fortress blessed the timing of his approach, trying to make his steps as quiet as he could as he moved towards his subject.

Fortress related using a gun to peeling off a band-aid; in his view, it was best to do it quickly. With his trusty machine pistol, all he needed to do was whip it out and fire a quick spray.

And - with that luck - Fortress nearly managed to kill Ash Ketchum. He would have nailed him to the wall, and one of the bullets in the spread would have struck the young trainer in the windpipe. In fact, that would have happened if it wasn't for a long, blue electric bolt swatting Ash away abruptly.

The bullets sank into the concrete wall after seething past the wood of the shelf, which itself remained intact. And before Fortress could say "Pikachu again", another bolt struck him in the chest which knocked out his breath.

Ash recovered quickly; he was used to Pikachu by this stage. Fortress didn't, now leaving himself at the mercy of Ash. And so the tables turned.

Fortress had a new headache after hitting the concrete floor in a bad position, but it wasn't enough to stun him. He lay on the floor, his eyes just managing to look up from it to see Pikachu.

To Pikachu's left, Ash was already stirring again. He got up and predictably approached the vulnerable Fortress, clutching his right hip where Pikachu had nudged him aside.

Ash kicked Fortress' now-fried headset aside. He then flicked out his own pistol from his pants - undoubtedly stolen from one of the Rocket Grunts.

"Looks like the big baby wants a bottle," Ash observed. "But I already have something else for him to suck on."

However, Fortress' trusty Crobat didn't manage to disappoint as it bolted to the scene. It was weak against electric attacks - Fortress knew that only too well - but it wasn't as if it intended to stay for any prolonged period of time.

It fired a confuse ray at Ash and Pikachu, causing them to react furiously. Bolts of electricity shot around the room, random in their patterns of direction and firing rate. Some hit Crobat, and some hit Fortress - but they weren't very concentrated shots, more like a frenzy of desperate attacks.

Clinging on to his Crobat with the rest of his strength, Fortress felt himself fly away. He had lost his gun in the process, but he didn't care at this stage.

***

James and Butch walked on, towards Fortress' office. By this time they had grown tired of speaking to one another; James felt himself complain whenever he found himself talking to Butch.

But they would need to open their mouths some more by the time they reached the office itself. James was told specifically that he would be there by then; he wasn't.

"Where are you?" James asked through the headset.

No response from Fortress. Nobody to take care of Butch but James himself. James didn't call on the Boss and help start the alarm for this.

But what was he going to do? James kept his aim on his gun steady. Would he have to kill him?

"This place has windows," Butch observed with a grunt, ignoring the look on James' face. Obviously he had never been in Fortress' office/quarters before. Few had.

James approached Butch slowly, balancing his aim by tucking his elbow into his belly. Butch gradually moved towards the windows, taking little notice of the Rocket that he seemed to know would be angry at any lack of attention.

James tensed his finger on the trigger. Maybe he wouldn't be in trouble for killing him. It would be what Jessie would have done. But now, Jessie was dead...

Suddenly, Butch seemed taken aback at something through the window. "Rob..."

"What about Rob?" James budged in, before he even recognized the name.

But James was interested too. He looked through the same window as Butch. His eyes widened.

Through the window, the troops outside took no notice. They weren't wearing Team Rocket uniforms, and they were carrying guns that James didn't know of. They carried Jessie along with them, piece by piece.

Rob stood behind them.

"Sorry!" was all James heard before feeling a sharp blow to his stomach, causing him to double over. James at once lost the grip on his gun, and found something snatched from his pocket.

James realized what had happened once he caught his breath two seconds later. Butch had distracted him, and taken advantage of it. By this stage he was gone, and had taken his gun with him.

Butch had distracted him, since he knew what it would take to do so.

For the next few minutes James continued to lie in a crumpled heap on the floor, hoping that he would wake up from what wasn't a dream.

***

Ash had met up with Misty and Tracey at a balcony from one floor up, along the side of the building. But of course, not before he had plugged yet more unsuspecting Rocket Grunts with bullets and electricity.

Pikachu was on Ash's shoulder, looking a bit bruised like its master. Misty wasn't going to ask about what Ash had run into back there. Whoever went through going back down a couple of floors in what was basically Team Rocket's Headquarters to get a single Electabuzz had to be insane. But then again, there was Ash Ketchum.

Ash slapped the pokéball which it was presumed contained Electabuzz in Tracey's hands. "I'm going to escape now."

"What about us?" Misty barked back. It was the first thing she had said since Ash had taken her out of her cell.

Ash sighed. "You follow, but only if you see me go through okay." Pikachu nodded in agreement.

With that, he left. Ash took the one-floor jump off in his stride, and Pikachu clung on to its master's shoulder all the while.

Misty bowed down, leaning against the stubby balcony wall with Tracey.

"So we're meant to stay and watch," Tracey muttered.

***

The sight of a young man leaping off the side balcony and darting towards the exit was just caught by Rob. Needless to say, it was one of the few things that Rob wasn't prepared to expect.

That would be Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu, Will explained.

And indeed, a small electric rodent Pokémon followed the tracks of the young man on his way out. Rob had heard of this little guy. Apparently caused quite a stir...

I think I'll need you to help me with him, Rob stated. My men are still positioned at the entrance to the building itself, and my Pokémon doesn't like electricity.

And it seems that Mr. Ketchum seems to be trying to escape; I'll set up a barrier.

***

Ash kept his sights on the gap in the large surrounding wall that clearly meant to be the exit.

Ash was running from the start, with the motivation of the freedom he saw. But as he began to expose himself out in the open to gunfire, he picked up the pace.

Running to rid himself of the Rockets; to go anywhere if it meant keeping Pikachu. He kept running, and picking up his pace as far as he could go.

But, oddly enough, after a point it seemed that despite his moving further and further onward, Ash Ketchum wasn't moving any closer towards the exit.

***

"Ash!" Tracey nearly yelled, but to no avail as Misty's hand muffled him.

"Shut up!" Misty hissed through clenched teeth. "Do you want everyone to know we're here?"

It took a few seconds for Misty to release Tracey from her grip on his mouth. "...Sorry," Tracey managed afterwards. "It was just that..."

"...Ash vanished into thin air," Misty jumped in. "Don't worry, you aren't the only one to notice."

"But what can we do now?"

"I... Don't know," Misty admitted, sighing.

Both of them then lay down in thought, staring blankly at the guns Ash gave them. If any Rockets were left on guard duty on their floor, they would have been sitting ducks.

"Will!" Misty suddenly realised.

***

Ash clenched his head, finally starting to react to Will's odd attack. The pain was a delicacy that Will was relishing.

Will's fist clenched at the same rate as Ash and his Pikachu's skulls caved in on themselves. He did it bit by bit to properly savor the taste of victory.

Ash Ketchum wasn't going to be moving any closer to the exit now.

***

With the job done, Will sat still in Fortress' Guest Chair - completely oblivious to the sounds of gunfire outside of the Main Office. He had done nothing in particular since his encounter with Pikachu, not with his new Pokémon with him.

Will spent that hour thinking about what was going to happen, and admiring the cosmetically-appealing size of Fortress' office/quarters. Most of this room was taken up by a long series of steps from the entrance. It was actually Giovanni's idea; Fortress just took it as it was because it was convenient in his circumstances, for it was on the ground floor which made it easy to get outside.

Fortress would probably have just taken any old dump if not for that, Will thought with a shake of his head.

There was a desk, with the Guest Chair on one side and the Host Chair opposite it. Behind it was a king-sized bed, with cushy covers and pillows that most likely originated before the war started. It looked so neat and let with such an obviously flattened surface that Will assumed with a shudder that Fortress had slept on the bed without going under the covers, and hence probably had not bothered to take off his clothes on the way.

When Fortress almost literally came crawling back through the entrance door with his Crobat, he certainly did look like the guy who had slept with his clothes on. Will was quite amused, but he didn't show it.

Fortress - after managing the feat of getting up all those useless steps - slung himself into his chair. Fortress' heavy head lay back over his chair.

"You're still here," Fortress pointed out between gasps, "why?"

Will's gaze focused deeply on Fortress; his Triatu mimicked him. "I think that we need proper control now," Will explained, "Triatu could be quite the surprise strategy to achieve such a goal."

Fortress snorted. "You want Triatu to take control of security again?"

Will said nothing, leading Fortress to shake his head. But Will could sense that Fortress' reaction wasn't one of rejection anymore, but rather of primitive denial.

"I think you may be right," Fortress gradually lied, "so why not?"

"I think that you should announce it on the PA," Will stated.

A short silence followed, but Will had some limited future sight which told him that he wouldn't need to break it.

"Why not?" Fortress finally repeated, reluctantly turning on the com-line.

Will rejoiced silently in his thoughts. The plan had worked; with Rob, he had managed to make Fortress change his mind. Perhaps Butch had held him up somewhat...

"Message to all marks," Fortress squeaked through the PA unit just as he turned it on. "I am giving permission to Executive Will to take control of security with his Triatu for the emergency. All computer terminals above and below ground will be taken over."

Will's eyes gleamed as he heard Fortress' last few words before the microphone was turned off. "Triatu can... Control you as a medium if it so wishes." Those were also the last words Fortress ever said.

The element of surprise and a few psywaves did the trick, spreading Fortress and his precious Crobat all over the floor.

Will could feel the new power this was giving him and Triatu. He could also feel barriers breaking down between him and the next level.

Soon, it would be time.

***

Rob felt it. Felt pleasure; waves of it filled his head, trying to take over. But the pleasure was all Will's - for the time being - coming in the form of the telepathic gratitude which haunted his thoughts.

Get my new men inside to react, Rob ordered, now that you're capable.

With pleasure, for indeed I am "capable". You have helped me get to what I've wished for.

Be careful what you wish for, Rob warned mockingly. You might just get it.

***

Will. I'm waiting.

***

James had never liked the look of those anonymous men in black that made up much of the Grunt force. They had appeared to be a recent phenomenon.

They would get him soon; with their numbers he was sure, and now indeed James was regretting the dismissal of his own suspicions. Bullets whizzed past his face, coming from the pistols that the suits held. He didn't knew why they were aiming at him; did he have to?

After zipping through a conveniently-placed bend in the hallway, James once again drew his pistol. Turning around to face the men behind him, he fired a few shots. They dropped like Pidgeys in a thunder wave, not stopping to suffer before they died.

Keep it up, James mused. Two down. Two-hundred and ninety-eight to go.

But still impressive, Will replied.

James perked up with a start, his pulse accelerating.

I didn't know that you could kill anything, Will continued to chime in. I thought that your woman did it all for you.

James gritted his teeth together. Will was doing all of this. Will was trying to kill him, and it looked to James like he would succeed.

James tried not to think. If he did, Will would notice. He wasn't strong enough to hide his feelings, even if the other person didn't also happen to be psychic.

Wait, Will thought, didn't you kill someone in Team Rocket? Out of cold blood, it was. You did quite well to make it look like Butch.

No, James replied with some strain. Butch is only convinced I did; all the more reason for me to be the one that threw him out.

"But wasn't there the voice, James?" James looked to his side to find the splitting image of himself. And indeed, one with the same voice; it just wasn't him.

James realized what had happened after a moment's thought. Butch was right, but also in a way still wrong.

"You see," the James copy explained, "you were always going to be an easy target."

The James copy had one hand clenched into a fist; when opened up, it revealed a hand grenade without a pin.

***

Will. I'm still waiting.


	6. Part-time Marionette

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Six  
"Part-time Marionette"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

A nearby explosion shook its surroundings such that Butch nearly found himself holding on to the handrail while continuing his dart up the stairway. He would have a sharper aim on Rob from the windows a few floors up, and it would be harder for the guards to counter-attack at a higher position, so he felt that it would be prudent to ascend.

What he did forget about was that there were plenty of people on patrol on the third floor up, which also happened to have the quarters of senior executives. Forgotten, that was, until Butch opened the door to that floor and found two armed Rockets talking.

Swallowing his breath, Butch hastily slipped back. Perhaps thoughts of Rob were distracting him too much; Butch found himself having to catch himself going too fast, which wasn't usually the case.

The Mantine was back in Butch's pokéball, as James had made him withdraw it. Perhaps quite simply a stupid thing to do.

Or perhaps James was afraid that Mantine would kill a few more Rockets with its swift, Butch presumed. But couldn't he just kill the thing?

"Hey!" Someone had clearly noticed his presence; cursing under his breath, Butch brought out his gun where he could see it.

Tap-tap. The sound of metal soles cracking against the concrete rang in Butch's ears. Moving closer and closer. The guard only stopped tapping when he stopped moving, and he only stopped moving when he was standing right in front of Butch.

Hastily Butch fired the pistol through the chin, blowing the Rocket's head into two pieces. Blood sprayed all over Butch and the wall as the semi-headless man collapsed.

Tap-tap. Now they were running. Butch brought out his pokéball, and without much hesitation released Mantine to the side wall above the new corpse.

Without further warning Butch slipped around the corner and fired a couple more shots; Mantine quickly took care of the rest with its swift. The normal-type attack was proving quite useful, as despite Mantine's poor attack rating the flying stars proven themselves quite deadly against weak human flesh.

Five men and women wearing Rocket Grunt and Rocket Executive uniforms dropped like harpooned Beedrills before the two of them. Smoke rose and shrapnel fell as the now-accepted noise of the alarm finally began to take over again.

Yet, above the alarm, Butch could hear someone yelling something from the next corner. "Mantine - use your bubblebeam!"

Nothing happened, but Butch kept interest with his gun at hand.

"Fire at Butch!" the voice continued to yell, "Will commands you!"

Butch fired his pistol again, as a sort of warning shot as he couldn't really see where the voice was coming from. But soon enough he did, as that man (indeed also wearing a Rocket uniform) also popped out from around the corner.

In place of its swift Mantine used its bubblebeam attack, plastering the Rocket on the wall. Unlike the swift there were no stars jamming into or penetrating his bones, but in its place the massive kinetic force alone killed him. He was in fact wedged into the wall such that his body lay in a semi-standing position.

A voice echoed in Butch's head, making him jolt upright: sorry about that.

Butch ground his teeth. Who are you?

This is Will. And you are Butch. I'm sorry; I forgot to tell him that I in fact don't have control over your previous Mantine.

What?

But it was too late; by this time Butch could tell that Will's presence had withdrawn from his head. Keeping his pistol as steady as he could, Butch decided that perhaps aiming for Rob from the top wasn't the best thing to do after all.

***

Will sat down on the chair in the center of his own one-room quarters, focusing his thoughts. Now that his Pokémon had control of security, Will finally had enough clearance to get to the being controlling Rocket City. Will had no idea how Giovanni managed to get that thing under control. Mewtwo must have been good practice.

Will could sense his getting in with a sense of pride and an inner fear of the unknown taking him, like happening to open a door that was usually locked. Yet this was his goal. The goal of all of his colleagues. What so many people failed to do.

I have opened up your cage. This is the moment I have been waiting for!

...So I'm no longer left waiting. But you may be disappointed, Will. I am essentially just a Pokémon with psychic ability.

Well, Will returned, I am a human with psychic ability.

***

Will was laughing, crossing his arms while seated. Giovanni was screaming as he clutched his swelling head.

Will enlarged the air bubble in Giovanni's brain with every second that passed. Empowering the once-powerful entertained Will like never before, keeping him in awe of his own ability.

Will had killed him. It was what Rob had recommended he did. It had been roughly a month ago.

***

But that ability isn't yours, Will... No human has that ability. If so, Misty would attack by squirting water from her mouth.

You have no basis for that argument, Will reminded it, for I still have this power now.

Only since you sensed me. Or rather, since I sensed you.

And Sabrina? And all the other practical proofs in this world?

I am not one for debate; I shall just disprove such proofs. I shall leave my "cage", as I have intended you to let me. I shall let you and the rest of your mediums go, and I will never come back. Farewell, my part-time marionette!

***

He had gone through with his plan, and with that everything vanished.

Will came back to the chair in his room - facing the door - with all of his power suddenly gone. He felt it. He felt dead to reality. He felt Human.

***

Butch burst into Will's quarters quicker than he had initially thought he would get to them; the labeled directions to the room in the hallway were quite easy to follow. But what he really didn't expect was Will himself actually staying in his quarters in a time like this.

"Hello, Butch," Will began.

Butch was in a rush after killing those Rockets, so he disappointed himself with his own haste in approaching Will. Moments of such haste were usually ultimately fatal events. But soon it was clear that now was an exception to the general rule.

An exception, as Will looked visibly different. Butch could recognize him - but only barely. Will appeared to have a sagging look about him that Butch when he caught a glimpse of him in the days of the much-hyped Elite Four.

"I'm nothing special now," Will admitted after some silence. He didn't need to be psychic to say that.

Butch raised an eyebrow. "I'd question that."

What he got in response from Will was simple.

"Try," Will chuckled. "I welcome it; you've certainly come at the right time."

Butch began to slip his hand towards his pocket. Will watched him.

"Go on," Will encouraged him. "Kill me. See how big a hole your bullet puts in my skull."

Butch indeed whipped his pistol out in front of him from his pocket. He focused on the grip he had on the trigger, and almost got as far as Will wished. But not quite.

Will's eyes began to water, so he shut them and didn't open them again. "A powerful Pokémon has been controlling this place."

"Explain."

"Me and my colleagues believed that it could give us more power if we met it in person, but... It turns out that I'm just a puppet for it, like all of the supposed psychics in the world." He kept his head bowed down low. "It has left, leaving us all without the power that we thought has made us stand out."

Butch wasn't too interested in his story, whatever it was trying to explain. When Butch thought about what he was interested in, he thought about one man.

"Why is Rob here?" Butch predictably asked. Those three words were why Butch arrived in his quarters with such haste; those three words were why Butch had the gun pointed at his face.

"I... I don't know."

Butch didn't feel in the shape to listen to stuff about a psychic Pokémon controlling him to make for an excuse to not know such a thing. He kept gradually tightening the trigger more and more, heading closer and closer to firing.

Will appeared to notice this with a relish the likes of which Butch had never seen before. Beads of sweat squeezed out of Will's forehead. His face turned gradually redder, matching his grimace.

Will began to hiss something through tightly clenched teeth, and Butch could have sworn that he was asking him right there to kill him.

Butch thought for a second of what to say next. "You know what the deal is with Rob." More a straight-forward inquiry than a question.

Will couldn't appear to take lying anymore by this stage. "...He's fighting a bunch of Rockets."

The answer relieved Butch, but he didn't look like he was. "Why?"

"Not sure... He was going to help me in return." He looked back up at Butch from the floor, finding that he couldn't have appeared more irritated. "I developed an army to support him disguised as Rocket Grunts, but as my power is fading quickly so will this force."

Will tightened his hands on his own chair further as Butch withdrew his pistol. "Thank you." With that Butch hurriedly left, leaving Will on the edge.

Butch slammed the door behind him, and grinned right afterwards when he reached into his other pocket and slipped out the universal keycard that he had sneakily snatched from Will into the palm of his hand.

Butch felt like going out to see if Will was correct about those Rocket Grunts. But Rob and Will weren't about to outwit him with a trick. Not yet.

***

Triatu tried to sense Will, to inquire on what it should do next. It sensed nothing but a body inside Will's quarters. The body was alive, but didn't have any power resonating from it. No power; no Will; no orders.

And what was Triatu going to do without orders? Whatever it wanted.

***

Butch was actually quite impressed at Will's universal clearance. Usually even the highest-ranked of Executives got either specialist or pseudo-general clearance on their key-card.

Either way, now that this development had come to Butch's attention he stopped associating thoughts of facing Rob with thoughts of death. He now had access to the Team Rocket Headquarters' entire "top floor" stash of Pokémon. Butch knew that it wasn't guarded, except with the electronic locks that the universal clearance on the key-card could make redundant.

Impulsively he headed for the door that shown the markings of the highest-security. He slipped the keycard through; the light flashed green, and the door opened.

Butch looked through to find a single shelf in a small brightly-lit room the size of a closet containing four pokéballs. Each one had a number painted on the top: "1", "2", "3", and "4".

After a few seconds, Butch's eyes widened in realization.

Like most of the former (and even present) Executives, Butch half-thought that the Team Rocket Four was just a rumor - stemmed by Giovanni to try to bring leader wannabes in and strike fear in the hearts of the many "copycats". But ever since Fortress took over as the leader of Team Rocket, Butch was concerned by how more willing Fortress seemed to be to send Crobat - his only Pokémon - into danger. It was as if Fortress had a backup plan; clearly in Butch's eyes this must have been it.

Though the pokéballs in the room only had numbers on them, it was said that the Team Rocket Four were Tyranitar, Dragonite, Arcanine, and Blissey. Butch hurriedly put this to the test, opening the first of the four pokéballs that he could get to.

Nothing.

Butch opened the other three in desperation, but there was also nothing. Then it dawned on him just how Will had universal clearance - and why. With that, he immediately dismissed his guess on why Fortress was less wary, and replaced that association with one of sheer incompetence.

Butch ground his teeth, reassuring himself that at least he knew what he was going to be up against in an encounter with Rob. But then again, it was no reassurance.

***

Rob surveyed the carnage before him with a relieving sense of nostalgia, taking all signs of lulls in the fighting with a grain of salt. Outside the building, his own turncoats and the Rocket forces clashed. Bodies of overwhelmed Rockets littered the ground; the turncoat forces were more powerful than they were Human.

Rob's own men and women from the base were no longer watching the entrance as was ordered, but he didn't care. They were at least fighting with their friends from inside the Team Rocket Headquarters: former Grunts, of which had been gathered up by Will under Rob's command.

But Rob's return to the reforming days of old was at first more real than he had hoped it would be. He found that although his new formerly Rocket Grunt forces appeared to outnumber and outgun the other Rockets, something was making them vanish from the fray. Rob didn't see a single one die, so this puzzled him.

Nothing would puzzle Rob and live to tell the tale. He perked up to attention, whipping his pistol out in front of him and moving into the chaos.

Rob brought a Pokémon with him that everyone knew about. But indeed he had a secret stash of his own; Will had kept it warm for him.

He whipped out a pokéball that nobody else from the base knew about. "Show your stuff, Tyranitar."


	7. Descent

Growlithe was his first Pokémon. Ever since he got it for his tenth birthday, he had caught a Dratini. After raising the Dratini a few levels, he had caught a Staryu with the help of a few wraps and a thunder wave.

He trained Growlithe carefully, by letting it kill types that it was strong against. He disposed of toasted Beedrills by tossing their mangled corpses over the fence into the next garden; his parents didn't appear to scold him if he did that.

Rob was now in his mid-teens, yet he was still doing this. By this time, most people his age were far more withdrawn with their Pokémon, but Rob kept his desire for more power and more training. Despite what kind of "loner" that may have made him, and how "dangerous" it was to keep making his Pokémon more and more powerful.

Rob had not managed to beat Erika of Celadon Gym yet, because he had not even bothered to face her. He would do so when he felt good and ready; the worst thing for him to have to go through was losing to someone would didn't even bother to round out her Pokémon squad.

One day, though, Rob felt a bit less complacent. A visitor had come to the house, apparently looking for something from his father. He watched intently through the screen door to the back garden as Growlithe blasted a few Sunkerns into immediate oblivion, and Staryu hurriedly extinguished the flame that threatened to spread through the garden with each time a blast hit.

The screen door opened; promptly the carnage halted, and Rob looked back at a broad stranger wearing a long red coat. He seemed somewhat withdrawn, yet later on Rob would find that this was as outgoing as Giovanni got (excusing the exceptional temper that he sometimes had).

So you're the latest, Rob thought as he remembered how his mother always brought a new guy into the house every couple weeks or so.

Everyone in Celadon City knew what Giovanni looked like; they just wouldn't say it to his face. Not even Rob, at least until he felt confident that Staryu knew powerful enough water-attacks to take down his mostly ground-type squad.

Rob quickly withdrew his Pokémon from the chaos in the garden before looking back up at this guest he had. He brought out his hand for shaking. "My name is Rob. And yours?" He had nearly forgotten to forget to say hello.

"...Gio." Rob dismissed that as pathetic; there was even the trademark hesitation.

"I see. What do you do for a living?"

"I study Pokémon." Giovanni wasn't lying - Rob could tell - so he just assumed that he was just not telling enough.

Rob cleared his throat. "What else?"

Giovanni shrugged. "I dabble in land ownership every once in a while." He looked like he wanted to go somewhere else; maybe Rob's mother had just asked Gio to meet him.

"I've heard of you," Rob began, "how are you doing with that game corner, then?" He had known about the game corner for a long time; it was the (whispered) word on the street.

Gio didn't appear to like Rob's questioning, but ignorance was a luxury that he would have to dismiss. "I have... A few friends," Gio admitted. "You'd be surprised at just how much people value a few friends and a good Pokémon above money."

To the contrary, Rob thought with glee, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Rob grinned devilishly. "Can I be your friend?"

"I'll see what I can do," Gio answered with surprisingly little hesitation.

"That's all I ask for." Rob crossed his arms, content with what his advances had got out of a man who was back then twice his age.

When that happened, Rob suddenly forgot about his "ultimate ambition" to toast Erika's ass (and Pokémon). Team Rocket would give him more than a crummy little badge.

That was what his mother had wanted out of him, anyway.

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Seven  
"Descent"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

Rob smiled. Team Rocket had betrayed him, but he almost felt the better for it now that he had won his Pokémon back. He had all five now; all that was left was obvious to him now.

From the top of the building that dominated the "City" that was not, there emerged a being that few knew about. Its intent was escape; leaving no kind of trail of destruction in its wake, it sped off into the skies.

Its departure was visible to the Human eye for approximately one second, appearing to be a glaring white flash of light. Rob knew what it was. Will didn't - until it was too late.

This was the aspect of Rob's plan that he didn't let on to Will. It was hard to keep a secret from a psychic for so long, but the feeling of spiting someone after working with them for so long was too good for Rob to deny himself. Will should have asked why he should have kept the four Team Rocket captured where they couldn't have been reprogrammed; he didn't.

Rob couldn't sense Will anymore. But then again, he didn't need Will anymore.

It would be done. Team Rocket would be no more. Rob smiled on looking at the bright flash, while in the meantime his Pokémon alone made mince meat of the defending Grunts and Executives.

By this stage, the black suits that were once supporting Rob in their droves - once unusually quiet Team Rocket Grunts - were all gone. Maybe they didn't even exist in the first place.

***

Butch grabbed whatever strong Pokémon he could from the other areas of the top floor stash. He also managed to acquire a "pokésash" - to be slung across the shoulder - which could hold up to eight pokéballs at a time. One of them held Mantine; the other seven held the minimal use Team Rocket Pokémon that he had chosen at the top floor.

With the alarm annoyingly persisting with its loud klaxon noises, Butch decided quickly enough to leave the premises. He was surprised by what little resistance he met on the way out; it was as if everyone else had left by this stage...

***

For a long time, Misty and Tracey had found themselves waiting for the encouraging signal from Ash that never came. All the while, Misty seemed to look more convinced than worried that Ash's confidence had just led him to his death.

That was until the floor shimmered below Tracey's feet, at which point the two were apparently in a hurry to jump off. It was a clear matter of impulse; a matter of life-and-death.

Misty landed calmly on the one-floor jump from the balcony. She looked to her left; Tracey - though clearly in shock - seemed alright.

They both looked back to see what was no longer the building that was the City, but a ruin dotted with concrete stumps that were once buildings, burnt-out cars, heaps of unrecognizable debris, and ancient skeletal remains. It looked to have once been a town.

By this stage, the huge Team Rocket Headquarters building - that supposedly survived the destruction of the war - was all gone. Maybe it didn't even exist in the first place.

"...I think this is where we leave," Tracey observed.

"Right."

***

One by one, the human stragglers had left the vicinity - surprisingly enough, usually with their lives rather than without. But the Pokémon that they had left behind remained fighting, hoping in vain to satisfy their bloodlust.

Many of the Pokémon under Rob's men were independently trained, while Team Rocket's were almost entirely made up of those kept with minimal use protocol in mind. The latter had little sympathy for life and simply kept the pandemonium going, taking advantage of the brutal edge that they knew they had.

Pokémon kept under minimal use were on the long-term inherently dangerous; that much Butch knew.

And indeed, Butch found himself caught up in the middle of this fray. His pokésash reminded him of the power he know had - but past that he was just another weak human, just as mortal as the rest.

Before long an Ariados emerged, clearly hoping to embrace this mortality that Butch had. Butch chucked down a pokéball once he noticed it moving towards him.

"Muk, pound it."

A huge mound of foul-smelling sludge materialized from the pokéball, but this sludge had eyes. It - Muk - gathered up a pile and smacked Ariados across the side.

Ariados swiped persistently at the huge mound, however its fury swipes attack failed to have much effect against the well-protected poison type. Not only that, but the fury swipes were driving itself into Muk, letting it slip deeper and deeper into the semi-liquid sludge.

An idea came over Butch. "Muk, acid armour."

Muk solidified instantly, making the Ariados inside it split roughly in half. The other Pokémon fighting around it immediately backed off, apparently quite threatened.

Butch looked ahead of him, and found Rob wandering past. Upon seeing him, Butch whipped out another pokéball.

***

Rob's favorite Pokémon were those that he had caught with the help of Team Rocket's corporate fronts. All he had to do was kill a few people. Kill a few people; Team Rocket bought out the Safari Park in Fuchsia City, and he caught himself a Chansey. Kill a few more; Team Rocket leased some land on Mt. Silver, and he caught himself a Larvitar.

Of course they had only got suspicious of Rob's unusual demands long afterwards - during the war - when it was high time to kick people out left and right anyway. Rob had only managed to sneak away his Starmie; the rest were taken away from him, with a cutting irony that made Rob ache for revenge.

Butch had also been thrown out of Team Rocket out of unnecessary suspicion, but to Rob he was a different case. As Butch appeared to him among the carnage that surrounded them both, Rob remembered what had happened between them. Butch was assigned the task of throwing him out. Now that Rob's plan had come to a close, there was nothing to prevent him from remembering.

Instantly all four of Rob's recalled Pokémon (the one he had brought with him to the scene still safe in his pokéball) stopped what they were doing and looked right at Butch. They remembered him too.

Butch called out six minimal use Pokémon of his in a squad that Rob found himself laughing at: Cloyster, Vaporeon, Charizard, Machamp, Hitmontop, and Misdreavus. But his Pokémon weren't laughing; in fact, they began fighting with much haste.

The first to meet were Charizard and Dragonite, and the battle was quick. Dragonite's agile flight was quite impressive considering its stubby wings; when Charizard tried to slash it, it missed by quite a substantial margin. Dragonite snuck behind it, and fired a hyper beam which certainly did not miss.

The white beam blew right through Charizard's chest; with countless vital organs suddenly gone from its possession, the fire-breather collapsed lifeless to the ground with a thump. Dragonite then began to recharge, but then all Hell just decided to break lose.

The Pokémon that were surrounding them were excited by the hyper beam. Within moments the scene had changed from a battle to a struggle for Rob to slip away in order to stay alive; already many of the minimal use Pokémon Butch held were already getting excited and turning against him for the purpose of creating more chaos.

In fact, all except for the calm and collected Misdreavus appeared to be going wild. It headed straight for the dark-type Tyranitar as Rob's Pokémon dared it to come closer. In fact, Rob recognized that it was Misdreavus' mean look rather than their taunting that was causing this effect.

Misdreavus suddenly wailed with an edge that got to Butch's heart and nearly made it feel like it was bleeding. It sustained itself for tortuous seconds, past Tyranitar's expectations.

But after that Tyranitar went back to pinning the ghost Pokémon, and began to crunch it with its gigantic mouth. The dark attack was super-effective, apparently making short work of the lower-level ghost.

Misdreavus' energies seemed to fade away as it was held in Tyranitar's crunch. But unexpectedly, once it fizzled out into nothing Tyranitar collapsed and died instantly.

Rob screamed in realization as he kicked the remains of his Tyranitar, which by this stage were already turning into a solid and dark block of rock. "Perish song; it was a fucking perish song!"

Arcanine was quite occupied as it found itself fighting several of those minimal use Rocket Pokémon at once by this stage. He had also lost all contact with his psychic-trained Blissey; not a reassuring sign, as the thing was usually annoyingly obsessive.

He looked back towards the exit. Butch was on the retreat, and with some success too; somehow managing to evade the many Pokémon that surrounded him, he was by this stage quite close.

He looked the other direction, to find the ground being crunched apart by the treading movements of a Steelix. It was half-submerged in an effort to make it move quickly in a straight line. On top of it was its trainer: Tanya, Rob's second-in-command.

Rob almost felt reassured, but the Steelix was not his. He would have to be lead on by those whom he commanded, which wasn't going to suit his image very well. But he had no other choice.

"Get on!" Tanya yelled; Rob hastily mounted the Steelix, looking back at the others that he had under his own command.

Rob noted that the other five remaining troops all watched him get on with a sort of wonder, stunned at the look mercy on their commander's face. Tanya didn't care - Rob knew that - but he also knew that others were much humored by Rob's descent.

Rob hastily recalled the only Pokémon of his that he could see (alive, unlike a certain Dragonite that Rob noticed just had an ice beam through its head), and this Pokémon was Arcanine. And with no further hesitation Steelix took off, past Butch and towards the Tohjo Falls base.

***

Tracey didn't get the same kind of resistance that Ash did to approaching the end; with the end very much in sight, Tracey thought it prudent to start moving quickly rather than with any kind of stealth. There were so many rare Pokémon here - no doubt owned by Rockets - that he couldn't get to look at in his rush, but now he was concerned with his life.

Tracey really wanted to somehow blow away everything in his way with his hasty exit, but he knew that if it was a Pokémon he couldn't. And especially not the Pokémon that blocked him and his Electabuzz from escaping.

Tracey couldn't tell exactly what it was; it looked sort of like Xatu. Misty also knew (to put it bluntly) that he couldn't tell, so she didn't even bother to ask even when she finally caught up with him and his Pokémon.

He didn't get to look at it long, anyway; promptly it vanished, disappearing into a small black hole.

Tracey was immediately concerned by how the other Pokémon fighting behind him began to grow wary in its presence, so he too began to step back along with Misty and Electabuzz. Soon he found a reason to react the same way as the other Pokémon did too; the hole soon began to pull everything around it into its own void.

It was an attack he didn't know from a Pokémon he didn't know. All Tracey could do was run with Misty. At first, he didn't realize that Electabuzz was simply staying put.

Electabuzz began to crouch on the ground, a sort of aura forming around it. It resonated with electric energy at first, but gradually it focused more and more into its fist. It would be a thunder punch; it would also be its last.

All the while, the force drawing Electabuzz, Misty, and Tracey towards the void was growing. Misty and Tracey were now past the point where they could stand, instead clawing on the ground in a desperate attempt to keep precious traction. In contrast, Electabuzz let itself get drawn in.

Following a blinding flash accompanied by a sickening and dull "pop", the force that relentlessly pulled Misty and Tracey in ceased. When Misty and Tracey stood up, they found that both the mysterious psychic Pokémon and Electabuzz were gone. Other Pokémon that had found themselves being sucked in simply shook their anxiety away and looked back towards the humans.

Misty looked to the grass, curious at first. But as a Jolteon began to walk towards them both - obviously looking for a spar - Tracey hastily shown other interests. Tracey pulled Misty away by her left arm, annoyed at the resistance she shown.

They were so close to the exit. Tracey didn't want to be struck down at this stage; he nearly was, as a bolt from a thunder attack grazed his hair. But apparently Misty was beginning to get the message too; she ran off with him until they were past the walls.

The two young humans had escaped; their Electabuzz was dead.

***

Butch had noticed a Steelix with Rob and those whom he commanded shooting forward into the horizon, undoubtedly heading for the Johto Falls base. It wouldn't take too long for them to get there; the speed of the Steelix was roughly the same as Mantine when riding the sand outside the walls.

Butch called out Mantine (now once again the only Pokémon that he had left) and whipped out his pistol. "Mantine, we're getting out of here."

Mantine treaded the sand and gathered up momentum; Butch leapt on top of it before it could pick up enough speed to prevent him from keeping up with it. Steelix was apparently not treating this like a race, for despite its head start Mantine soon overtook its speed.

Butch wasn't going to fall behind Rob. That would have left him completely "used" yet again - used like Cassidy had used him - guilty as charged. He had taken down Rob before; with everything and everyone else behind him, he felt as if he could do it again.

Instead, to slow Steelix down further Butch prompted Mantine to fire more of its bubblebeam attack. Shots of bubbles at an incredible speed soared through the air at a rapid rate towards the back of the unsuspecting Steelix.

Immediately the back sections of the steel Pokémon rotted away, taking a few of Rob's troops with it. This also exposed Rob's back to Butch's line of sight, and hence firing range for his pistol.

But it wasn't as if Rob didn't notice; he crouched just in time for Butch's shots to miss the intended target. It was only a few seconds more before Rob sat back up again, but by this time he had released a rather angry-looking Arcanine to face Butch and his Mantine.

It let out a blast of its flamethrower - aiming for Butch's face - however, Butch had managed to swerve himself away from the blast just in time. Instead, his Mantine's belly had taken the fire, but a high special defense and a water-type made it almost virtually immune to Arcanine's otherwise deadly flame attacks.

Butch kept moving closer towards Rob, but as he did he was continuing to approach the Arcanine. With its fire-type elemental attacks obviously not working to any good, Arcanine instead opted to leap right on top of Mantine as long as they were close.

Of course the take down maneuver didn't work as it had planned; its front paws had managed to cling onto Mantine's slippery hide, but it remained dangling from Mantine's front having mistimed its own jump. Its body skidded against the sand as it too began to dig into the ground like Mantine was.

In an effort to shake it off, Mantine wing attacked its opponent as it clinged on. It turned into a flip which nearly threw Butch into a panic, as soon he found himself eating the sand he was once riding above.

Mantine was still moving, but Butch was riding it the wrong way around. He had closed his eyes shut from the sand, but the friction nearly managed to tear his eyelids off before Mantine managed to right itself.

When Butch opened his eyes again he looked behind him to see an Arcanine rolling limply into the distance with its neck broken, and he looked to his front to find Rob and his female lieutenant. Now he could so much as notice Rob talking to her, but the noise of Steelix rumbling through the sand prevented Butch from hearing what he had said.

This was it. Butch aimed his pistol at Rob's head to at least interrupt him. Grinding his teeth, Butch pulled the trigger.

Click. Out of ammo.

Rob soon noticed Butch approaching him again, and promptly chucked his last pokéball towards his face. Arcanine had not been as successful as the spherical object that Rob had chucked, which alone knocked Butch clear off his Mantine.

Butch flinched and fell to the sand, tumbling aimlessly to a stop. His head weighed his body down, at first keeping him from moving. Once he halted - and Rob's Steelix was truly gone - he opened up his eyes again.

The pokéball opened to reveal a Starmie, Rob's last Pokémon. This was the one that he had managed to keep safe and away from him and the other Rockets; otherwise, it would have been the Team Rocket Five.

Mantine didn't leave Butch behind for Rob; he didn't know whether to be angry or thankful of that. Either way, it saved his life as he was sure that without its return Starmie would have simply killed Butch on the spot and danced back to Steelix and its master.

Despite its apparent pursuit of honor shown in its attacking the other Pokémon before the human, Butch could tell that Starmie was itching to finish Mantine off quickly and hence get back to Butch. For the next few seconds, it sure looked to be the case.

Starmie danced along the sand, and Butch could see its rapid spin attack hit Mantine hard. The motion of the attack had gathered up a lot of momentum from cleaving into the sand with its many sharp ends; that didn't surprise Butch.

What did surprise Butch was that a wing attack-like maneuver from Mantine suddenly blasted Starmie away, sending it skidding on a painful path towards oblivion.

Starmie sank into the ground, apparently more dead than fainted. Its core jewel had broken apart into several pieces from the retaliation. With little hesitation Butch recognized the move as "counter", but he didn't think that a Mantine could even be taught such a technique.

"Gary really sneaked that one past, didn't he?" Butch managed from where he lay in the sand, still doped down from the pokéball that hit the side of his head.

Butch didn't think it possible, but he could have sworn that Mantine had winked back.

***

Rob suddenly lost telepathic contact with Starmie. What had happened to Blissey had now happened to Starmie; Rob knew what had happened. All five of his Pokémon were gone now. He had destroyed Team Rocket and the illusion of power of all human psychics for his Pokémon, and yet now the Pokémon he went over in the first place to take back were gone.

He remembered why Starmie would succumb anyway, but by then it was too late. Back in the days when he had respected Gary, he had told him about his own dream Mantine. He didn't think a Mantine could learn counter, so he went on one of his "if only"s with the young scientist.

Of course he was talking to the one guy he shouldn't have been having that sort of conversation with. And of course he was wishing that Gary Oak could be killed more than once.

***

Butch had only realized when they had both reached the Tohjo Falls themselves that Mantine looked seriously injured, as if it was about to faint. The encounter with Starmie that it was forced to deal with had probably done it in; counter's said nothing about the state of a Pokémon's health.

The Tohjo Falls wasn't so much representing the great waterfalls separating Johto and Kanto as it was a dried-up hill. It used to be a cave, before most of the ceiling had caved in. The water had long since dried up and gone to a better place, making there be no particular border between Johto and Kanto.

Butch could see what was left of Rob's forces at the top, apparently distracted by the persistent gunfire from below. From his angle, Butch could also just notice that those people firing at Rob's men and women were in fact Rockets with reprisal on their minds - and these Rockets certainly outnumbered them.

Trying to use the stealth that he knew he didn't possess, Butch decided to approach those at the top from behind as the Rockets were attacking them from their front. His Mantine slowed itself down as they approached the side of the hill that was the Tohjo Falls and turned to face the back section.

This place clearly used to be where the water fell from and where many a Johto trainer had to give their special water Pokémon the waterfall HM to pass. But now that it had dried up the way up was simpler yet more dangerous.

One end of the back edge had a slope that didn't look that steep but did seem rather suspect to collapse. The rest shown the general appearance of a sea cliff, with short steel hooks to let humans climb on the end opposite the slope.

Butch would have recalled his weakened Mantine, but now it seemed determined to take the inevitable. Reluctantly he let it take the slope on its own, while he climbed up the other end. Surrounding Rob's troops from both ends would make for a deadly surprise.

Gradually Butch ascended the face of the steep end, trying his best to forget that suspiciously flimsy steel handles were all that kept him from falling to his death on the hard stone floor below. Gradually the steel began to wear away his hands, and he could have sworn that there were a few with quite sharp ends.

Butch had found that his Mantine had reached the top before he did, but it had arrived to a bad situation. All of the non-Rockets had by this stage vanished off to another location except for one, who took down Mantine between the eyes with a pipe.

It was in trouble, and probably by this stage unconscious. As Butch ran towards his Mantine, the assailant either didn't seem to notice or perhaps didn't bother to acknowledge Butch's presence.

A Pokémon of above-average caliber would seldom be defeated in any melee combat with a human. Butch immediately regretted not withdrawing his Mantine immediately; he already had all of his other Pokémon killed, so it wasn't helpful letting this one go down too.

Butch quickly recalled Mantine with his pokéball. He let out the breath he held when he felt a bit of warmth inside the ball once it was brought in. Mantine was alive - if only just. Butch - having now dismissed his pokésash - slipped the single pokéball into his pant pocket.

The man holding the pipe slowly raised his head up from the floor to just catch a glimpse of Butch's face from the corner of his eye. Rob's eyes gleamed such that Butch at first didn't recognize the man he had known for years.

"Well," Rob remarked, "apparently I have company."


	8. Desert Hurts

Desert Hurts  
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Eight  
"Desert Hurts"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

Rob found himself talking half to the floor, and half to Butch. "You should take this like a man, not the little rat that you are. Show some respect."

Butch's face twisted into a frown. "...Respect?"

"You have killed my pokémon. Give me the pleasure of killing yours." Rob looked up to stare Butch in the face, tightening the grip on his pipe. "Don't make me take it from you."

Butch's - Brock's - pistol was now out of ammunition. Inside its pokéball Mantine was unconscious, or at least Butch wished that to be so. The cave's exit was a few paces away from Butch's position, but Rob stood at half that distance.

Butch stared back at Rob with a smile that said nothing. And with that, casually he attempted to walk past him and to the other and more gently-sloping end of the hill.

Rob's pipe interrupted Butch's stroll, knocking the wind out of him from behind his back. Butch felt the pain on his back as if it were a large weight, keeping him down on the ground in a twisted heap.

Rob spared his legs the effort of kicking Butch while he was down; he preferred putting his pipe to some use anyway. Butch took another blow to the back, this time swatting him flat against the ground.

Butch couldn't move himself quickly enough to fight or flee with the blows to his back keeping him down. Rob had Butch's life hanging by a thread now that he was finally down like this; both of them knew that. This was perhaps why Butch for once failed to predict what Rob did next.

Everything outside had now gone quiet. Butch could only hear Rob's breathing as he felt him go closer and closer to the back of his head. When he felt as if Rob was breathing down his neck, Butch also noticed a hand reach into his pocket for a certain pokéball.

Butch's left hand flailed across the rocky ground, looking for something to stop Rob with. All he could find was a few small stones, but he chucked them at Rob's face anyway.

Rob seemed to react to this, as the next thing Butch felt were a few sharp kicks to his side sending him rolling away. Rolling and rolling, to the edge where he would fall off.

"The Rat's taking a beating," Rob observed as Butch kept flopping away, "the Rat's taking a fall."

Every time Butch tried to get up, he was promptly kicked once again. So, he didn't get up at all. But that didn't help either, as the kicks kept sending him rolling closer and closer towards the edge.

Even with this in mind, Butch was still taken somewhat by surprise when he found the upper half of his body with no ground supporting it. It leaned back on the steep ledge, letting his head slip into a state of vertigo.

All Rob had to do was nudge Butch slightly to effectively knock him off, at least until Butch had found the exact same pieces of metal as the handles that he had climbed up onto the top with with his flailing arms. Without hesitation he clung onto one with his right hand for dear life. But of course, he still wasn't off the ledge yet.

Rob continued to approach, until he was standing right above his new enemy. Butch looked right at his face to prevent him from in turn looking down.

However, it was only a matter of seconds before the hand that clung onto the metal handle suddenly found the whole thing give way. The piece of metal was indeed flimsy; it broke off the ledge, causing the arm to swing in a panic.

"Swing" it did. After a brief moment where the sharp end of the metal jammed against bone, Butch could have sworn that he heard Rob scream. The tall, lean man who had destroyed Team Rocket collapsed, slipping past Butch and the edge of the hill's steep face.

Rob had apparently accepted his fate, as Butch didn't hear him scream on his way down. Butch should have got up right there, as the hill could well have just continued to crumble from there and it would have been most ironic for him if it did, but for what seemed like hours but seemed minutes he gradually caught his breath.

Once he was finished fiddling with oblivion Butch reached into his pocket, remembering a certain pokéball. But no matter how much he felt around in there, he couldn't find any now. He swallowed hard.

Butch didn't think that he would get himself to look down the remains of the falls again - but for Mantine's sake he did, having now stood securely up taking no notice of his crippled right arm. For a brief second, he thought about that fall he nearly managed to appreciate himself. But only for a second, as the gift was for Rob's taking.

The pokéball had slipped out of Butch's pocket, and fallen the same height that Rob had. It was cracked in several places, and the Mantine inside it was dead.

"Old habits die hard," Butch remarked.

***

One woman and two men not wearing Rocket uniforms stuck around in the shadow of the Johto Falls, using a man bearing an Executive uniform that they held captive as a human punching bag.

Probably, Misty reckoned, to ease the pain of something they had lost.

She looked down at her feet, sighing. I guess I'll interfere anyway. Bringing out her pistol, she pulled herself out from around the corner to meet them.

"Halt!"

A pause. The three assailants looked up at her, their guns poised but not aimed. All three seemed to quickly accept that she could blow their brains out with a few shots before they could so much as press the trigger. Or at least, Misty liked to think so.

"Go," Misty ordered, surprising herself with how she relished her grip on her own gun.

The three shrugged, and left hastily.

Once they had run off, Misty finally recognized the man on the ground before her. "Butch."

"Indeed!" Butch gurgled back with a sort of raspy noise that sounded vaguely like laughter.

It was the first thing Butch had said to her, on that fateful encounter. It was the last thing he said, before the pain finally sent him off the mortal coil.

***

The two figures cautiously observed the collapsed motorbike. They had been well-known trainers once, friends of the famed Ash Ketchum. But that didn't stop them from mugging a biker that happened by chance to come their way.

Misty had a Beretta successfully hidden in an inner pocket, but with a 'click' after the blast she discovered that it was now out of ammo.

"That was our last bullet." Misty threw her pistol away, leaving it to lie in the sand.

"At least you didn't waste it on a miss," Tracey concluded, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"I never miss!"

The End


End file.
